South Sudan decides

JUBA, Sudan, Jan 9, 2011 ( REUTERS): Millions of jubilant south Sudanese voted Sunday in an independence referendum expected to see the region splitting away from the north to create Africa's newest nation.

People queued for hours in the burning sun outside polling stations in the southern capital Juba, and many were turned away as the first day of voting in the week-long ballot ended around sundown. Southerners view the poll as a new beginning after decades of civil war.

"This is the moment the people of southern Sudan have been waiting for," southern President Salva Kiir said after casting his ballot, urging people to be patient as they waited to vote.

"I am voting for separation," said Nhial Wier, a veteran of the north-south civil war that led up to the vote. "This day marks the end of my struggles. In the army I was fighting for freedom. I was fighting for separation."

Hours after voting started, the celebratory atmosphere was marred by reports of fresh fighting between Arab nomads and tribespeople associated with the south in the contested oil-rich Abyei region that borders north and south.

The referendum was promised in a 2005 peace deal ending a civil war which has raged on and off since 1955, fuelled by oil and ethnicity, between the mostly Muslim north and the south, where most people follow Christianity and traditional beliefs. The war left two million dead and displaced four million people.

The deal allowed Juba to create a semi-autonomous government with its own constitution, laws and parliament.

In Juba, actor George Clooney and US Sen. John Kerry mingled with dancing and singing crowds. "It is something to see people actually voting for their freedom. That's not something you see often in your life," Clooney said.

In the north, emotions were also running high. "We feel an incredible sadness that a ... very loved part of Sudan will separate from us," said northern opposition Umma Party official Sara Nuqdullah.

"We must now work to reassure the northerners in the south and southerners in the north and the tribes in the border zone that they will not be harmed," she said, breaking down in tears.

The vote's organizing commission said it had defied gloomy forecasts of delays to deliver all voting materials on time for Sunday's deadline.

The logistical achievements have not been matched by political progress. Southerners went to the polls without knowing how the two countries will share assets, debts or disentangle a complicated citizenship issue.

Thousands of Sudan exiles vote in neighboring countries. Ras Lumumba David, dreadlocked and jubilant, danced outside a polling station in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa where south Sudanese exiles were casting votes.

"Today is my birthday, the birthday of south Sudan," the 50-year-old said as the music of Bob Marley blared over speakers outside the station. "I've been away for 35 years. I've felt like a bird that couldn't land on earth."

Thousands of southern Sudanese lined up to vote in Ethiopia, Egypt, Kenya and Uganda, elated by the prospect of an independent south and a long-awaited return home, despite the myriad challenges the new nation is likely to face.

"Today is a new day," a group of southern Sudanese voters sang in Arabic as they danced in the dirt road outside a polling station in a southern Cairo suburb. "I'm not going backward, I'm moving forward, forward to freedom."

John Loding, a 25-year-old refugee in Cairo, said he was eager to go back as soon as the south split from the north.