Sudan Delays
Elections By Six Days
Sudan
has postponed by six days, a long-awaited elections, to make up
for hitches in registering millions of voters.
Election officials have faced huge logistical challenges in
organising the first multi-party polls in 24 years in Sudan,
Africa's largest country.
Sudan's National Elections Commission said it was extending
voter registration across the country by seven days to December
7 because of a late start in some areas and appeals for an
extension from some political parties.
A statement by the election commission on state news agency SUNA,
said the start of the ballot has been shifted to April 11, 2010
from April 5.
The elections, parliamentary, presidential and local, have been
delayed twice before from their original date of July this year,
set under the terms of a 2005 peace deal that ended more than
two decades of civil war between north and south Sudan.
The timing of the poll has been a sensitive issue with some
Southerners fearing a long delay could encroach on a referendum
on southern independence promised in January 2011, under the
same peace accord.
North Sudan's dominant National Congress Party (NCP) has
expressed support for the latest small delay, which would give
voters more time to sign up.
REUTERS/Yinka
