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As the polling process of the south Sudan referendum ended on Saturday, north and south Sudan enter a new transition period, which observers describe as "era of political dispute" between the two sides.
"The transition period could see waves of political disputes between the two sides as for sensitivity of the outstanding issues, " Khalid Dirar, a political scientist at al-Rasid Center for Studies and Researches in Khartoum, told Xinhua.
"The two sides have agreed to delay the thorny issues until the referendum after they failed to reach consensus and therefore, the post-referendum stage would witness a fateful political struggle," he added.
Dirar further stressed that the remaining phase of the transition period was very short considering the size of the outstanding issues which necessitate marathon negotiations between the National Congress Party (NCP) and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).
"The coming phase needs the two sides to speed up completing what could contribute to preserving the long-standing history between the two peoples of north and south Sudan," he said.
The South Sudan Referendum Act has committed the two parties to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) to enter in negotiations aiming at achieving an agreement on the essential issues in the post-referendum phase and stipulated that those negotiations be attended by all the organizations and countries which signed the CPA.
Many outstanding issues emerge that could spark tension during the transition period including the issues of difference over border, the dispute over the oil-rich area of Abyei, the Blue Nile and south Kordofan areas, nationality, ownership, oil, water, joint military integrated units, the international agreements and conventions, currency, external debts and the national assets.
Khalid El-Nur, a Sudanese political analyst, told Xinhua that the issue of the border constituted the biggest concern that is threatening to spark security tensions between north and south Sudan during the transition period.
"It must be noted that the expected south Sudan state, should the referendum resulted in separation, would not be of known borders. This is a time bomb that is waiting to go off at any time unless the two parties defuse it," he said.
"I do not expect the two parties would manage to complete the border demarcation during the transition period which is six months because it is known that the borderline between north and south Sudan is very long and there are many areas that represent points of difference between the two sides," he added.
"And since the border issue is concerned with five areas in south Sudan, yet the most dangerous one is the Abyei area, where the Mesiria tribe insists on its right to vote in the area's referendum, while the SPLM, which supports the Dinka Ngok tribe insists that only the Dinka has the right to vote," he said.
Regarding the other outstanding issues, Khalid Dirar of al- Rasid center said that "with regard to issues of nationality, ownership and civil service, the two parties should reach an agreement that guarantees the citizens' rights without any discrimination on base of regional affiliation."
"There must be a specific and accurate legal determination for the issue of nationality together with the favorable options that could be adopted in case of separation such as the option of double nationality besides definition of the rights associated with citizens and those associated with non-citizens," Dirar said.
Apart from the outstanding issues that the north and the south are awaited to resolve, other challenges emerge that could similarly cast negative impact on Sudan's political, economic and security future whether in the north or the south.
Sudan's external debts, for instance, constitute a heavy burden for a fragile economic system in the north and another one yet to be built from zero in the south, which needs a stance from big countries and the countries to which Sudan is indebted to ensure the stability of Sudan, both in its north and south.
In this respect, Adil Abdel-Jalil, a Sudanese economic expert, speaking to Xinhua, stressed the importance for north and south Sudan to exert joint efforts to have all or most of Sudan's external debts, which amount to over 30 billion U.S. dollars, be exempted.
"If the two sides failed to have exemption, then all the loans, with their interests, which have been utilized in establishment of development projects in the south, must be specified for the newly born state to shoulder," he said.
"Sudan stands on two types of economies. A moving economy in the north and a static economy in the south, and therefore, the international community must take into consideration the requirements of the post-dispute economy in the south on one part, and the requirements of the economic stability in the north on the other part," he added.
Sudan's external debts amount to around 35 billion U.S dollars, most of which date back to 30 years, for example during the era of former Sudanese President Ja'far Nimiri who ruled Sudan for almost 16 years.
The week-long polling process of the south Sudan referendum concluded on Saturday, but the South Sudan Referendum Commission ( SSRC) decided to extend the polling at one overseas center, namely in Australia, for extra five days.
The total number of the registered eligible southern Sudanese voters amounted to 3,930,916 voters, 3,753,815 of them in south Sudan, 116,860 in north Sudan and 60,241 in eight overseas countries including Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Australia, the United States, Britain and Canada.
Around 17,000 local observers together with 1,200 foreign observers are monitoring the south Sudan referendum which is the major item in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), inked in January 2005 between north and south Sudan, which ended a two- decade civil war between the two sides.
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