George Clooney urges action over Sudan vote

George Clooney has urged US President Barack Obama to ensure fair elections in Sudan.

The actor and activist went to the White House after returning from a visit to Sudan to discuss US involvement in Africa's largest nation ahead of a critical election early next year.

Clooney is asking the US and world community to use international pressure to prevent violence ahead of the election - an independence referendum on south Sudan that is likely to split the country in two.

There are fears the vote could trigger a civil war between the north and south of the country.

Clooney said: "If there's some way to get ahead of this and stop it before it happens, we'd better."

Mr Obama said in the meeting that the ultimate responsibility for Sudan's future rests with its political leaders.

He met with other world leaders at the United Nations in September to address concerns that preparations for the vote were lagging, saying the coming months would show whether the Sudanese people "move forward with peace or slip backward into bloodshed."

A 2005 peace agreement that ended a bloody 21-year civil war between Sudan's mostly Muslim north and predominantly animist and Christian south set up a unity government in the capital, Khartoum, as well as an autonomous government in the south. It called for the 2011 referendum on southern independence.

The civil war was one of the bloodiest of the second half of the 20th century, causing the deaths of more than 2 million.