لوكا بيونق:الشماليين الذين قاتلو مع الحركة والجيش الشعبي سينالون الجنسية الجنوبية ويحزرالمسيرية

Quote: Dispute over Abyei region unresolved * Misseriya tribe risk wrath of new nation, says official * South to offer nationality to southerners in north By Opheera McDoom KHARTOUM, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Sudan's north and south will resolve the contested Abyei region, but the Arab Misseriya tribe risks provoking the wrath of a future independent southern Sudan if it continues fighting, a southern official said on Monday. Three straight days of clashes in flashpoint Abyei between the Misseriya and southerners marred the Sunday start of voting in the southern referendum on independence which is expected to create a new nation on July 9, in the culmination of a north-south peace deal signed in 2005. Luka Biong, a senior official in the south's ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), told Reuters the Misseriya were being used by some members of the northern ruling National Congress Party and would pay a high price in the end. "I'm really worried about the Misseriya because they have been used," said Biong. "Abyei will be resolved and tomorrow you are going to have a new state ... and the bad face is being shifted onto them." "A time will come when the government of southern Sudan will say: you are becoming a real problem to us and if that happens their livelihoods would be at stake," he added. The northern Misseriya rely on a long-held agreement with southern communities to move their cattle during the dry season to use water in the south. The tribe was mobilised by Khartoum during the country's civil war as a proxy militia. Under the 2005 deal Abyei was given a special status and was supposed to hold its own referendum on whether to join the south or north. The vote did not happen. The parties could not agree on who would vote, so Abyei will likely be settled as part of a wider post-referendum deal on how to separate the two countries. "Imagine the suffering -- on the very day they should have been voting on their future, instead the Abyei people were being killed," Biong said. "The timing was just so political," he added, calling the Misseriya "reckless". The Misseriya say the SPLM attacked them first. The clashes claimed at least 36 lives on both sides. NATIONALITY Biong said those who had fought for the SPLM but lived in the north would be offered southern nationality. The north's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has ruled out dual nationality for southerners in the north, saying they will be sacked from government jobs, prompting an exodus south. Biong said southerners in the north's civil service would automatically get nationality from the new state in the south. "They will have to leave their jobs," he said. "It should be coordinated with the south because the south needs these people." Sudan's north-south civil war raged on and off from 1955, over issues including ethnicity, ideology, religion and oil. (Editing by Andrew Roche)