Sudan must work hard to have elections on time: U.N.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan's north-south foes have a lot of work ahead to meet a July 2009 deadline to hold elections under a landmark peace deal, the head of the United Nations mission charged with monitoring the accord said on Thursday.

Ashraf Qazi said he hoped a National Electoral Commission (NEC) would be formed quickly and offered U.N. help for the preparation for the first democratic vote in 23 years.

"The NEC will have its work cut out for it to have these elections on schedule," he told a news conference in Khartoum.

He said the NEC was an "essential interlocutor" for the international community and donors would be willing to give funds to help the process.

"We would have to work with the NEC on a number of issues to enable them to have the kind of elections that the Sudanese people will find acceptable," he said.

"For that, a lot of preparations are required."

He said demarcating the boundaries between north and south and around disputed Abyei, which is rich in oil, were still necessary to delineate constituencies before the vote.

On Abyei, he said both the northern Sudan Armed Forces and the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) had not fully withdrawn from the region, and he urged them to do so.

"We do not see this as a major problem, it's just a question of delays," he said. "I am confident that soon these forces will have completely withdrawn from the areas."

An international source familiar with the situation said there could be as many as 300 troops from both sides still in the region.

Clashes in May burnt most of Abyei town, killed dozens of people and drove 50,000 people from their homes. Observers call Abyei Sudan's "Kashmir", but with an administration agreed and the outstanding issue of the border referred to an international tribunal, Qazi said there was good progress.

The north-south conflict claimed 2 million lives and pitted the Islamist Khartoum government against mostly Christian and animist southern rebels. It was complicated by issues of religion, ethnicity and ideology.

(Reporting by Opheera McDoom; Editing by Michael Winfrey)