(9 Apr 2010)
Bentiu village, Unity State, South Sudan
1. Silva Kiir, President of South Sudan and First Vice-President of Sudan arriving on pickup truck
2. Various of crowd waving and cheering
3. Band playing
4. Kiir (wearing black hat) watching band
5. Kiir sitting on sofa
6. Various of crowd
7. Various of men and women dancing
8. Kiir walking down steps
9. SOUNDBITE: (Arabic) Silva Kiir, President of South Sudan and First Vice-President of Sudan:
"But when we reviewed what had happened, we found that the elections, even if it was popular, the results would not be good."
10. Salva Kiir in front of soldiers
11. Crowd waving
12. Men dancing
FILE: date/location unknown
13. Aerial shot of oil facility in south Sudan
STORYLINE:
Sudan''s first multiparty elections in two decades, due to start on Sunday, were in disarray on Friday, with a second key opposition party announcing a boycott of the ballot.
The pullout by the Umma Party, announced by a senior party official on Thursday comes just days after the main southern party, the Sudanese People''s Liberation Movement (SPLM), announced it would boycott the poll in the northern states.
On Thursday the President of South Sudan and SPLM chairman, Silva Kiir, addressed a campaign rally in Bentiu, the capital of Unity State in Southern Sudan.
The party pulled out of the race in the north, as well as the presidential race and balloting in Darfur, but is still running in the southern provinces and two regions along the oil-rich north-south boundary line.
Separately, election observers from the European Union said on Thursday their monitors would not observe the vote in volatile Darfur, apparently because of the situation in the troubled western region.
A senior Umma party official told The Associated Press her party''s move came after the government and the national election commission failed to respond to key reform conditions.
Sudanese opposition parties accuse the ruling National Congress Party of using state resources, limiting their access to media and controlling the election commission.
The elections start on April 11, and will include local as well as parliamentary and presidential polls in three days of voting.
The vote is a crucial step in Sudan''s 2005 north-south peace deal that ended a 21-year civil war and paves the way for a referendum that will allow southerners to decide whether to secede from the Muslim-dominated north.
Some two (m) million people died during the war. It is separate from the Darfur conflict, which erupted in 2003 and has left 300-thousand people dead.
No comprehensive peace deal has been reached for Darfur but the elections are still going through there.
The EU''s Election Observation Mission said it has deployed all 130 observers across Sudan but was pulling six monitors sent to Darfur and would not observe the voting there.
The head of North Darfur''s State Election Commission said the news of the EU''s pullout was a "surprise."
Sudanese officials have said the polling will take place as planned but international observers and rights groups have expressed concerns that all signs point to a flawed process that is unlikely to deliver a free and fair vote on time.
Former US President Jimmy Carter arrived in Khartoum on Thursday to help monitor the vote and expressed regret that some of the parties chose not to participate.
In a statement, he said the focus should now be on the 16-thousand candidates who are still involved in the elections.

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