The one issue neither can postpone much further is the fate of Abyei, a region that straddles the border and has oil, water, and grazing land for nomadic tribes. The Bashir government has threatened to go to war if the referendum occurs without settling the status of Abyei. The CPA mandated a separate referendum for the region, but Khartoum has been unwilling to let the vote go forward; there is talk of an agreement whereby the south would annex Abyei by decree and pay off the north with oil revenues. But no one knows whether this is something Khartoum will accept. Bashir and Salva Kiir, president of the government of Southern Sudan, met on Wednesday, Nov. 24, in Addis Ababa to discuss the problem, but agreed only that it must be resolved. The two are scheduled to meet again on Saturday in Khartoum.

Or maybe it's all a charade. While hundreds of thousands of voters have registered in the south, only 9,000 of the half-million or more southerners living in the north have done so. Leaders of the SPLM fear that Khartoum is preventing voters from registering and plans to blame the south. "They'll say, 'We're not going to accept the results of the referendum because people were prevented from registering,'" says Ezekiel Gatkuoth, representative of Southern Sudan in the United States.

Bashir knows that the south would respond with a unilateral declaration of statehood and would be fully prepared to fight to preserve its sovereignty. This month, he moved army units close to the border, perhaps hoping to provoke the south into striking first. But the south has recently bulked up its military with tanks and anti-aircraft capacity, making the military option for Bashir much more costly. Maybe that, too, is a bluff. No one can be sure.

In the end, Bashir is making a straightforward calculation: What do I get for playing ball; what do I lose for breaking up the game? The great imponderable for him is the role of the international community. The systematic atrocities which he committed in Darfur starting in 2003 met with terrible denunciations but modest punishments; with virtually the entire region's population still cowering in refugee camps, Bashir has tested the resolve of the international community, and come out a winner. (And with the world preoccupied with the north-south drama, he has once again stepped up the clandestine bombardment of Darfur.) The International Criminal Court has indicted him on genocide charges, but in recent months both U.S. and U.N. officials have said little about the subject, apparently fearful of risking Bashir's cooperation on the referendum. What will happen if in any case he walks away from the referendum? Perhaps the African Union and the Organization of the Islamic Conference will back him up, as they have in the past.

The international community has begun mobilizing, albeit in its own rather diffident way. Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa and now head of what is known as the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel, has pressed the two sides with growing urgency to settle the toughest issues, especially Abyei; he will be presiding over the meetings in Khartoum this weekend. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed a Panel on the Referenda, led by Benjamin Mkapa, the former president of Tanzania, which could play a crucial role in giving legitimacy to the Jan. 9 vote. Both the United States and Britain are signaling their strong, if still implicit, support for a new southern state. On Nov. 18, Britain, which is currently president of the U.N. Security Council, convened a ministerial-level meeting on Sudan and gave the floor to Pagan Amum, Southern Sudan's chief negotiator. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke, publicly announcing the offer to remove Sudan from the terrorism list.

Ultimately, the Southern Sudanese look to Washington for protection and support. I asked Gatkuoth how he felt about Gration, who has been harshly criticized in the south -- and among Sudan activists abroad -- for showing Khartoum too much deference and taking its flimsy pledges at face value. "Obama has taken control of the process," said Gatkuoth diplomatically. "I'm so excited because the whole administration is on board now." The United States cannot, in fact, settle the north-south problem on its own; Bashir must feel pressure from his Arab and African neighbors and allies, as well as from the West.

But as is also so often true, both parties are looking to Washington to underwrite an agreement they are reluctant to make. Perhaps Obama will never get much credit for acting in such a way as to prevent a calamity. But if Southern Sudan achieves statehood peacefully after Jan. 9, I would say that's something to be very thankful for.

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