Key Sudan Census to Begin Despite Controversy

KHARTOUM, April 22, 2008 (AFP) - Sudan on Tuesday shuts down for its first census in 15 years, a milestone in the peace deal that ended Africa's longest civil war but clouded in dispute threatening to undermine the accord further.

In the 2005 agreement signed by the former warring north and south, the two-week census is crucial to prepare constituencies for national elections and confirm or adjust the wealth and power-sharing ratios in central government. But the undeveloped south has refused to be bound by the results and rebels in Darfur will boycott the count, both accusing the Arab north of manipulating the census to maximise its control and marginalise the African majority.

Khartoum, assisted greatly by the United Nations, says it has prepared the most comprehensive population count ever held in Sudan, a country almost constantly engulfed in civil war since independence from Britain in 1956. Around 60,000 enumerators and 200 observers are to deploy for the population count costing Sudan and the international community 103 million dollars.

"The census begins at one minute past midnight (2101 GMT Monday)," Yasin Haj Abdin, director of the central bureau of statistics, told AFP. "The planning and field work in the south has been the best possible... They have every enumerator in place and (we have) the international resources to get best possible census in the south and all of Sudan," Abdin said.

But discontentment and disillusionment run deep in the south, where the legacy of the war that killed two million people and displaced another four million, is keenly felt despite a flood of refugees returning for the count.

"The level of preparedness was very low and even if counting takes place (Tuesday) its not going to produce the desired results," south Sudan information minister Gabriel Changson Chang told AFP.

His government said it was unlikely to accept the results after the north insisted the survey go ahead --delayed for the fourth time last week when the south complained that ethnicity and religion were not included.

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