20100919
africanews

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan hopes to start registering voters in mid-October for a referendum on the independence of its oil-producing south, a senior official said on Sunday, the first formal indication of a date.

There are widespread concerns that Sudan has not left itself enough time to organise the plebiscite, due on Jan 9. 2011.

Southerners are to vote on whether to stay in Sudan or secede in a referendum promised in the 2005 peace deal that ended decades of north-south civil war.

Analysts fear any delay, or messy outcome to the vote, could spark a return to civil war, with dire consequences for the surrounding region.

"We hope to begin registration in mid-October," Mohammed Ibrahim Khalil, the head of the commission organising the referendum, told Reuters.

"If there are no delays, no obstructions, no hair-splitting, if the commission works smoothly, if we don't get interventions from different parties, if people let us alone, it is just feasible that we will meet the 9th January deadline," he said.

"People should not run away thinking that it is so easy that we are confident. We are doing all we can. We are working night and day."

Khalil said the commission would spend the coming weeks getting registration forms printed, recruiting 10,500 field workers to carry out the count and finalising the commission's budget.

Commission members were only announced in late June, and its secretary general nominated on September 2, after months of wrangling between northern and southern leaders.