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Namibia welcomes South Sudan - by Irene !Hoaës
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Feb 10, 2011 - 5:32:12 AM

Namibia welcomes South Sudan - by Irene !Hoaës

10 Febuary 2011

WINDHOEK – Namibia will welcome the new Sudanese state that will be born on June 9, 2011.
Foreign Affairs Minister, Utoni Nujoma, said the United Nations, African Union as well as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have sanctioned the secession of Southern Sudan from Northern Sudan.

“It falls in with the AU resolution to assist the Sudanese, so we are ready to assist them,” Nujoma said.
He said although the full report of the results has not yet been released, important figures such as President of Northern Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, have indicated that they would accept the wishes and desires of the Southern Sudanese to establish their own country.

According to the Foreign Affairs Minister, the Sudanese already co-exist. What separates them is mainly politics.
“They already share resources such as the oil in Southern Sudan. They will continue to assist each other as before,” Nujoma added.
He pledged Namibia’s help to South Sudan.

“We have been assisting LPF through the AU. We have been providing training, such as the Sudanese students who were trained in Namibia and we will continue to do so,” the minister pledged.

Preliminary figures on the referendum results indicated that 98.83 percent of the electorate voted for secession..
Many southern Sudanese see the vote as a chance to end years of northern repression, which they say stretches back through years of civil war to 19th century raids by slave traders.

The referendum is viewed as a culmination of the 2005 north-south peace deal that aimed to end Africa’s longest civil war, reunite the divided country and install democracy.

For now, the Namibian Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, would cater for Southern Sudan. However, Nujoma said that Namibia would in future set up an embassy, based on available resources.
Namibia is also considering the possibility of setting up diplomatic offices in countries such as Algeria, Congo Brazzaville and Kenya.
Namibian embassies in Tanzania and Egypt currently cater for countries in eastern and northern Africa, respectively.


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