Nairobi - Sudan's Foreign Minister said yesterday the government was fully committed to a referendum on self-determination in south Sudan and would be happy to see the south become a sovereign state.
"If the south wants to secede and live as a sovereign state then let us live as good neighbours," Mr Mustafa Osman Ismail said the day after peace talks with southern rebels ended in the Kenyan capital.
But southern rebel negotiators gave an opposite assessments of the talks, branding them a failure because the government offered nothing new.