South Sudan: where Jimmy Carter treads

The strife in Southern Sudan reaches new peak:

As many as 40,000 people may have fled fighting in Sudan's South Kordofan state, the UN has said.

"Of the Kadugli population, estimated at 60,000, between 30,000 to 40,000 people are now believed to have fled the town," Elisabeth Byrs, spokeswoman of the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told reporters in Geneva on Friday.

Another 100,000 people, most of them ethnically southern Dinka Ngok farmers, have fled to the south from the contested Abyei border region nearby since it was overrun by northern troops on May 21, according to UN estimates.

So, in the midst of the war, who is going to remember the prophetic (as usual) words:

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, meanwhile, said Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir told him that Southern Sudan should not have to shoulder Sudan's debt should it secede from the county. The question of how to split Sudan's debt is one of several issues that would have to be resolved if the south votes for independence, as is widely expected.

The man is really casting a deathly shadow on all the places he visits.