* Time running out six weeks ahead of independence vote
* Delay would anger southerners expected to choose split
* U.S. envoy to U.N. Rice sees no need for delay (Adds U.S. ambassador Rice, diplomats, paragraphs 7-8)
By Andrew Heavens
KHARTOUM, Dec 2 (Reuters) - The head of the commission organising south Sudan's independence vote intends to ask the country's leaders to delay voting by up to three weeks, his deputy said on Thursday, a move that would anger southerners.
Officials are struggling to meet a Jan. 9 deadline to hold the vote on whether the oil-producing south should declare independence or stay part of Sudan -- a plebiscite was promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war between the north and south.
The timing of the referendum is highly sensitive and preparations for the vote are falling far behind schedule. Southern leaders have accused the north of trying to delay the vote to keep control of the south's oil and have up to now rejected any calls for delay.
The head of the referendum's organizing commission, Mohammed Ibrahim Khalil, a northerner, told fellow board members he would write to Sudan's president and the leader of the semi-autonomous south asking for a delay, his deputy said.
"The chairman said he was going to write to the presidency to request an extension up to the end of January ... Because of the tight timeframe, he thinks that is it necessary for some extra time," commission deputy chairman Chan Reek Madut said.
Logistical problems and north-south bickering have plagued preparations for the vote. The commission should have been set up in 2007 according to the constitution, but members were only sworn in this July.
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council this month, said the registration process in the south appeared to be going smoothly and there was no point in delaying the plebiscite.
"We are looking forward to and expecting the referendum to be conducted on Jan. 9," Rice told reporters in New York.
BICKERING
Khalil said he could not comment on the contents of any letter between the commission and the presidency and said he was still working hard to meet the Jan. 9 date.
"If the commission addresses a letter to the presidency it would not be proper to say we have asked the presidency to do so and so and so," he told Reuters.
"The question of time has always been in the discussion right from the beginning," he added. "If you get more time we can do this (referendum) more efficiently. If we don't get more time, we will try to make do with what we have got."
Madut, a southerner, said he disagreed with the chairman's assessment that officials could still meet the Jan. 9 deadline, despite a late decision to reopen the bidding for the printing of ballot papers and other logistical delays. "Any extension is unpopular (in the south)," he said. [ID:nHEA153457]
Southerners, embittered by decades of war, are widely expected to choose independence. There have been growing worries that rows over the vote could reignite conflict.
The north's ruling National Congress Party (NCP), which is campaigning for southerners to choose unity, said on Thursday investigations into reported irregularities during the registration process might hold up the vote.
Senior NCP official Rabie Abdelati told Reuters a number of unnamed civic groups were planning to go to Sudan's constitutional court on Sunday asking it to halt preparations for the referendum until irregularities were addressed.
Northerners and southerners are also at odds over plans for a separate referendum on the ownership of the disputed region of Abyei, also scheduled for Jan. 9.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Thursday warned against plans by Abyei's Dinka Ngok tribe, linked to the south, to hold its own referendum without northern cooperation.
"Any attempt to impose a solution from one side will meet with disastrous consequences for both sides," he told supporters. (Additional reporting by Khaled Abdel Aziz in Sudan and Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations; Editing by Giles Elgood and Paul Simao)
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