South Sudan's Kiir says no to corruption in new state

Says new "zero tolerance" policy on corruption

Wednesday, 09 February 2011

President of South Sudan Salva Kiir said urbanizing the south's remote areas was his main concern

Juba, SUDAN (Reuters)

South Sudan will confront the endemic corruption it has ignored until now, its president Salva Kiir said on Tuesday, a day after official referendum results set the region on course to become a separate nation on July 9.

Kiir will be the new country's first head of government but warned that the mainly rural south would not see change without huge support from donors.

Southerners voted overwhelmingly to separate from the north in a January referendum, ending a cycle of decades of bitter civil war. But other than oil revenues it will share with the north, it has little income to build a nation from scratch.

"We all know it is what people have been talking about, that there is corruption in the government of southern Sudan and that it will be a failed state if it becomes a free state," Kiir said in the southern capital Juba after returning from the announcement of the referendum results in Khartoum.

"I concentrated on the implementation of the (peace accord) and that gave opportunities for the thieves to put their hands in the pockets of the government. Now that the referendum is over ... the war against them will now begin."

Kiir said "zero tolerance" of corruption was now in place across South Sudan.

Donors have made it clear that with the global financial crisis, they will be more discriminating with the funds they give the emerging nation, whose leaders have been tainted by major corruption scandals.

The southern government gets about 98 percent of its budget from oil revenues, which will still be shared with the north post separation, although the percentage has yet to be agreed.

Kiir said urbanizing the south's remote areas was his main concern.

"Getting towns to rural areas shall remain the number one priority in the new state," he said, adding that more than 80 percent of southerners live in basic, rural communities.

Billions of dollars in aid will be needed to sustain development in the south, which is roughly the size of France but has less than 100 km (60 miles) of asphalt roads.

The United Nations says it is feeding more than 1 million of the south's 8 million population and hundreds of thousands more are expected to return south after separation.

Southern Sudan has fought the north for all but a few years since 1955 over issues of ethnicity, ideology, religion and oil, culminating in a 2005 peace deal promising the secession vote.