Iraq’s government has missed its deadline to compile a list of people eligible to vote in a December referendum that will determine the fate of a large, oil-rich and bitterly disputed swathe of the country, officials of northern Iraq’s Kurdistan autonomous region said on Monday.

Politicians from the Shia-led bloc that dominates the government and the Kurdish parties that are its main allies had agreed before the formation of the national unity government in June 2006 that on Tuesday would be the deadline for a “census” of the inhabitants of Kirkuk and other “disputed territories” of northern Iraq.