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Sudanese authorities said on Friday they would give southerners an extra week to register for a referendum on the independence of their region, but promised the extension would not delay the January 9 vote.
The referendum gives people from the oil-producing south the chance to decide whether they should secede or stay part of Sudan, a vote promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of north-south civil war.
The south has refused to accept any postponement of the vote and analysts have warned the disputes could reignite conflict.
The referendum's organizing commission told agencies it would extend registration by a week because some registration centers in the south, overwhelmed by the huge turnout, had run out of forms and needed more time to restock.
Registration will now end on December 8, commission member Chan Reek Madut said. "It is not going to affect the January 9 deadline ... We are going to reduce some days for reporting and complaints before then. It will be condensed," he said.
At least 1.3 million southerners had signed up at the end of the first week of registration Monday, the commission said.
The referendum commission has estimated that around 5.5 million southerners may be eligible to vote, including 500,000 in the north and half a million abroad.
The NCP also called for the registration period to be extended to give southerners living in the north more time to sign up, the state news agency Suna reported.
Northern officials have previously threatened to reject the referendum result, accusing the SPLM of trying to guarantee a vote for independence by discouraging southerners based in the north from taking part.
PHOTO CAPTION
In this hand out image made available by the United Nations-African Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) on November 15, Abdul Rahman Suleiman, a South Sudanese "sultan" (leader) shows his ID card which he collected on the first day of voter registration in al-Fasher, north Darfur.
Agencies
