Khartoum: President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan has said he is ready to let the south secede if that would end the country's 15-year-old civil war.
State television on Saturday night quoted President Bashir as telling a Qatari television station: "The possibilities of unity stand, so do the possibilities of separation. However, the option of separation with peace is better than that of unity with the continuation of the war."
The civil war in Sudan has been raging since 1983 between Khartoum and the main rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, which has been fighting for separation of the Christian and animist south from the mainly Muslim north.