Southern Sudan to vote on secession

Nearlyfour million registered voters in Southern Sudan will cast ballots when a seven-day referendum on separation from Africa's biggest country begins Sunday.

The European Union will have 104 observers and experts. The Carter Center founded by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter is deploying more than 100 observers.

Carter himself, along with former UN secretary general Kofi Annan and U.S. Sen. John Kerry and actor George Clooney, a Sudan activist, will be present for the referendum. China, which has large investments in Sudan's oil sector, is also sending observers.

The vote, which is likely to lead to the world's newest nation, is the culmination of a 2005 peace deal that ended a north-south civil war that lasted two decades and killedtwo million people.

After the polls close on Jan. 15, counting will begin at local polling stations and results will be posted at each polling site, giving the world an early look at piecemeal results. The ballots will then be sent to Juba and verified using a double blind data entry system.

A summary of the results will be posted on a website, though final results aren't expected to be verified until the end of January. It is likely the vote's outcome will be known well before then, however.

"There is an overwhelming consensus that the south will vote to secede. The question is what happens the day after the vote," said Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The north and south still need to negotiate the distribution of oil revenues, rights to the White Nile, official borders and citizenship rights. If the south votes to secede, full independence won't take place before July 9, when the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, or CPA, expires and a new agreement must take its place, said Ottaway.