KHARTOUM, Oct 9 (Reuters) - South Sudan's president has asked U.N. Security Council envoys to send peacekeepers and set up a buffer zone along the country's north-south border ahead of a southern vote on independence, diplomats said on Saturday.
Sudan’s oil-producing south is three months away from the scheduled start of a politically sensitive referendum on whether to secede or stay part of Sudan, a vote promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war with the north.
Sudan’s Muslim north and its south, where most follow Christianity and traditional beliefs, have still not agreed on the position of their shared border and analysts fear conflict could re-erupt in contested zones, some of which contain oil.
In a sign of the tension over the vote, up to 40 pro-independence southerners clashed with riot police and northern unity campaigners in downtown Khartoum on Saturday.
The demonstrations were held to coincide with the visit to the capital of the envoys of U.N. Security Council states, who also visited the semi-autonomous south in recent days and met with its president, Salva Kiir.
"Salva Kiir asked for U.N peacekeepers to be deployed along the border between the north and the south," one diplomat told Reuters, on condition of anonymity, saying the request was made at a meeting in the southern capital Juba on Wednesday.
The diplomat said the request would be considered but the envoys made no promises to Kiir.
A second diplomat said Kiir had also proposed setting up a buffer zone along the ill-defined border. The diplomat did not give details of location of the proposed zone or its width.
