* First indication of date for voter registration
* Fears Sudan does not have enough time to organise vote
* Delays, messy outcome could reignite civil war
KHARTOUM, Sept 19 (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 Sept. 2, after months of wrangling between northern and southern leaders.
The registration itself could be contentious. Southerners accused Khartoum of fixing the registration of voters in April's national elections. It remains unclear how officials will identify southerners eligible to vote in long-standing northern refugee settlements and communities along the ill-defined north- south border.
Analysts expect most southerners, embittered by the war and perceived northern exploitation, to choose independence.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has promised to accept the result of the vote but says he and his northern National Congress Party (NCP) will campaign to persuade southerners to choose unity.
Most of the country's oil lies in the south, although the north has the refineries, pipelines and Port Sudan, the only commercial outlet to the Red Sea.
Sudan still has to name a commission to organise a separate referendum on whether the central oil-producing region of Abyei should remain in north Sudan or join the south, a vote also due to take place on Jan. 9, 2011. Northern and southern troops have clashed in Abyei since the peace deal and tensions remain high.
Aid agencies estimate 2 million people died in Sudan's north-south conflict over oil, religion, ethnicity and ideology. The war destabilised much of east Africa. (Reporting by Andrew Heavens; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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