WASHINGTON—The U.S. said Monday it would recognize an independent Southern Sudan and review its designation of Sudan’s government in Khartoum as a state sponsor of terrorism after that African nation accepted the south’s vote to secede.

Election officials said Monday that more than 98 per cent of ballots in the Jan. 9 vote were in favour of independence, meaning Southern Sudan will become the world’s newest country in July.

“I congratulate the people of Southern Sudan for a successful and inspiring referendum in which an overwhelmingly majority of voters chose independence. I am therefore pleased to announce the intention of the United States to formally recognize Southern Sudan as a sovereign, independent state in July 2011,” President Barack Obama said in a statement.

He called it “another step forward in Africa’s long journey toward justice and democracy.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton commended the Sudan government for accepting the outcome.

She said in a statement Monday the designation will be lifted if Sudan does not support terrorism for the preceding six months and provides assurance it will not do so in future. It must also fully implement a 2005 peace agreement that ended a two-decade civil war between the north and south that killed more than 2 million people.

Clinton urged both northern and southern leaders to continue to work together toward full implementation of the peace agreement and post-referendum arrangements, to ensure they become two “viable states living alongside each other in peace.”

The mainly Christian south and mainly Muslim north must still negotiate citizenship rights, oil rights and border demarcation. Virtually all of southern Sudan’s budget comes from oil revenue, and the north wants to maintain fuel supplies from the south.

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, who has been indicted for war crimes in the western Sudan region of Darfur, on Monday backed the vote results and said he wanted to be the first to congratulate the south on their new state.

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