Southern Sudanese leader Salva Kiir was sworn in as first vice president of Sudan today after the death of predecessor John Garang in a helicopter crash last week.
Soldiers and military vehicles were deployed in the capital Khartoum, where the ceremony took place, and there were not the scenes of jubilation that accompanied Garang's return to take up the same post just over a month ago.
Mr Kiir placed his hand on the constitution as he pledged his allegiance to the government of Sudan, standing by President Omar al-Bashir and Second Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha.
Mr Garang, head of the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), signed a peace deal in January to end Africa's longest civil war, which killed an estimated two million people, mainly through disease and hunger.
The peace deal led to the creation of a new coalition government, in which Garang, as leader of the SPLM, took the position of first vice president on July 9th.
The deal agreed wealth and power sharing, democratic elections and a southern referendum on secession from the north in six years.
Mr Kiir, who led the military wing of the organisation that fought the Islamist northern government for over two decades, was quickly appointed to replace Garang as head of the SPLM.
He will face the difficult task of forming the new government and ironing out the many
issues left to be negotiated in the peace deal. Although he was known as a separatist, Mr Kiir has vowed to uphold Mr Garang's vision of unity under the January deal.
The southern civil war broadly pitted the Islamist northern-based government against the mainly Christian, animist south, complicated by issues of oil, ethnicity and ideology.
Garang was killed in a helicopter crash in southern Sudan just three weeks after becoming first vice president. Suspicions of foul play sparked the worst violence in Khartoum for decades, polarising the northern and southern communities and killing 111.