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By WILL CONNORS And MAGGIE FICK

JUBA, Sudan—The Republic of South Sudan celebrates its first day as a nation Saturday with more than 30 African heads of state, high-level Western officials and one leader who fought for years to prevent this all from happening—Sudan President Omar al-Bashir.

Oil-rich Sudan, Africa's largest country, has served as a 20th-century battleground for land, resources and ethnic identity. Efforts to quash uprisings brought Mr. Bashir an indictment from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed in Darfur. He is also listed by the U.S. State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism. Though decades of wars ended in 2005, Mr. Bashir can still travel only to countries that haven't promised to arrest him.

His presence appeared far from the minds of Southern Sudanese in their first minutes of independence. Just after midnight Saturday morning, the southern capital, Juba, erupted into dancing and cheering. A man got to his knees and kissed the ground. Women lit candles. Young men ran down streets waving flags and shouting "Independence!"

Mr. Bashir's expected presence for ceremonies in Juba later Saturday is both a sign of how far negotiations for southern nationhood have come, and a reminder of how fragile peace with its new northern neighbor remains. In the face of an internationally backed secession movement from the south, Mr. Bashir capitulated on independence—and so far, from the northern city of Khartoum, he has held to an agreement of allowing the split and maintaining the peace.

"We welcome President Bashir to attend the ceremony and to recognize the independence of southern Sudan in the spirit of togetherness," said Garang Diing Akuong, South Sudan's minister for energy and mines. "There is no need for any confrontation.... There are issues we need to resolve that can be resolved in a peaceful manner."

Key among those unresolved issues is the future of the two sides' shared oil industry. Most of the 500,000 barrels of oil Sudan produces a day comes from the south, but all of the refineries and export terminals are in the north. Mr. Akuong acknowledges talks on how to split future oil revenues "are not progressing well," but mediators hope that they can pick up again after the independence ceremony.

And despite the 2005 peace deal, militias allied with the south continue to clash with the Sudanese army in the north. Mr. Bashir has sent tanks into a contested area along the border. He has also ordered aerial assaults of villages in the oil-rich northern state of Southern Kordofan, where his troops have been bombing villages in an effort to wipe out rebels that fought on behalf of the south during the civil war. Talks in Ethopia aimed at reaching a Southern Kordofan cease-fire broke down this week.

The question facing other African and Western officials now is what sort of carrots and sticks are in place to make sure Mr. Bashir continues to support the new African nation, doesn't disrupt oil supplies and avoids another war. His attendance Saturday is a positive sign, some say.

"The driving concern here has been the independence of South Sudan, that there's a soft landing and that peace is maintained. Bashir's presence sends a very important signal in that regard," said Derek Plumbly, the chairman of the Assessment and Evaluation Commission, an international group working on the implementation of the 2005 peace accord.

Mr. Bashir, 67, has ruled Sudan since taking over in a 1989 coup. For the violence in Darfur, the U.S. has imposed economic sanctions against Sudan that prohibit U.S. companies from doing business there. The State Department has classified Sudan a state sponsor of terrorism since 1993 for harboring terrorists, including Osama bin Laden.

U.S. officials have refused to remove Sudan from those lists until it complies fully with the 2005 peace accord.

Still, some aren't making a fuss about celebrating the south's independence with Mr. Bashir. "We want to respect the south's day," said Princeton Lyman, U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan. "We don't want to do anything" to interfere with the independence celebrations, he said.

Mr. Bashir—who is one of two sitting heads of state, alongside Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, under ICC indictment—has traveled and skirted arrest. Last month, the Sudanese president headed to Beijing in an apparent effort to assure Chinese leaders that oil supplies would be secure after the south's secession. Sudan has been China's sixth-largest source of overseas oil and accounted for 5% of its oil imports last year.

In Khartoum, Sudanese officials denied the ICC had any bearing on the president's travel. The "ICC is nothing," northern Sudan government spokesman Rabie A. Atti said by phone from Khartoum on Friday. "Bashir is doing his own acts without putting into consideration all actions by the ICC prosecutor."

Some residents of a soon-to-be independent south were ready to extend a welcome to a former enemy but said they remained dubious about whether the neighbors can peacefully coexist. "He doesn't usually keep the promises he sets. He says this today, and tomorrow the other," said Martin Mawien, 24, a southerner who is studying medicine in neighboring Uganda and came home to Juba to celebrate independence with his family. "But if he is coming to give us our right, I'm quite okay with his decision."

All week, women in green "Keep Juba Clean and Green" T-shirts have been stooped over, sweeping the capital's dusty thoroughfares with straw brooms. Laborers have worked around the clock to improve roads, erect streetlights and install the city's first traffic lights.

But South Sudan is facing enormous challenges as it embarks on statehood. Roughly 85% of the Texas-size country's eight million people are illiterate and about three-quarters of the country doesn't have access to basic health care, according to aid groups. Until a year ago, Juba had only a handful of paved roads.

What's more, the administrative arm of the government, the civil service, is woefully unprepared. A 2009 study by the United States Agency for International Development, the aid arm of the U.S. government, found that most southern Sudanese government employees hadn't worked in an office before and didn't understand their responsibilities.

Security is also a paramount concern. Southern Sudanese forces have been out in force, doing house searches one recent Saturday to rid the city of illegal guns, and confiscating motorcycles from unregistered drivers. These new policies have forced many Juba residents and the sudden influx of foreign visitors to take to "footing," the local term for walking.

The few cars and motorcycles still on the streets have encountered road closures and jams as the drivers of newly trained motorcades get in last minute convoy-driving practice in new black Mercedes Benz SUVs.

On Friday, the U.N. Security Council unanimously authorized a 7,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission for the new nation, to be known as the U.N. Mission in South Sudan, or UNMISS. The U.N. last month authorized a new 4,200 man force of Ethiopian troops to police the cease-fire in the area of Abyei.

"There is a basic acknowledgement that there is interdependence between north and south," said Hilde Johnson, the U.N.'s new special representative to South Sudan, in an interview. "What is critical is that both of them have it in their best interests to work it out with their neighbors."

But with the stronger military and hefty oil reserves, say analysts, peace in Juba and along the border between north and south is still largely in Mr. Bashir's hands.

—Joe Lauria and Jay Solomon contributed to this article.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304793504576434052777444130.html