Ex-rebel says Bashir must draw south Sudan lesson

KHARTOUM — President Omar al-Bashir must learn the lesson of south Sudan voting to secede or risk seeing other regions break away, the ex-southern rebel group's northern leader and former presidential candidate Yasser Arman warned in an interview.Arman also said the students behind this week's anti-regime protests represent the "anger in society," and called on the Khartoum government to immediately release more than 100 detained protesters and cancel the price hikes on food and fuel if it wants to avoid a "Tunisian scenario.""President Bashir and the (ruling) National Congress Party (NCP) have to learn a lesson from what they did in the south. The south walked away because of the disrespect and lack of recognition of the diversity," Arman, a secular Muslim from northern Sudan, told AFP.Preliminary results from last month's vote on southern independence, due to be confirmed on Monday, showed nearly 99 percent of the mostly African Christian south backing separation from the predominantly Arab Muslim north.Bashir has vowed to reinforce sharia, or Islamic law, in the north when the south, as expected, becomes independent in July."North Sudan is a diverse place... What Bashir is saying is not going to preserve stability in the north. It will lead to what happened in the south... to other parts of the north seceding, in Darfur, in eastern Sudan and elsewhere."Arman, who was Beshir's main rival in elections last April, said the programme of his party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, which included "recognition of Sudan's diversity, democratic transformation, and social justice," was the only vision that could keep the country together.He was speaking after a week of localised but vocal anti-government protests in north Sudan organised by student activists via the Internet, and inspired by events in Tunisia and neighbouring Egypt.All week riot police have clashed with protesters in Khartoum and other northern cities demanding regime change, civil liberties and an end to debilitating price rises and the

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