Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir pledged to respect the results of southern Sudan's referendum on independence and maintain peace with the region during a visit five days before the vote.
"If the south chooses independence, we will come and congratulate and celebrate with you," Mr Bashir said in a statement in Juba, the regional capital.
"We are of the opinion that enforcing unity by force has failed."
The referendum is the centrepiece of a 2005 peace accord that ended two decades of civil war between the mostly Muslim north and the oil-producing south, where Christianity and traditional religions dominate.
About 2 million people died in the conflict and 4 million fled their homes. Mr Bashir's government in Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, which governs in Southern Sudan, must still reach agreement on issues such as border demarcation, apportioning responsibility for the country's $38 billion foreign debt and sharing income from oil production.
"We also believe that unity is for the benefit of both north and south," Mr Bashir said, according to a translation by Al Jazeera.
"We maintain that unity is the best way to ensure progress, stability and the welfare of all the people of Sudan."
Southern Sudan accounts for as much as 80 per cent of Sudan's 490,000 barrels of daily oil production, while all of the country's crude exports are carried through a pipeline running north to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.
Ballot papers should reach all of the more than 2,600 polling stations by today, Chan Reec Madut, the deputy head of the commission organizing the referendum, told reporters yesterday in Juba.
More than 3.9 million people have registered to vote in the week-long plebiscite that starts on January 9th, he said.
Bloomberg