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Iraqi plans to update an election law to adopt a more open voting system may fail because issues over disputed Kirkuk province remain unresolved, the parliamentary speaker warned on Monday.
Iyad al-Samarrai said MPs may have to fall back on existing legislation that utilises a more opaque process which only names electoral lists, but not candidates standing for office.
"Members of parliament will be obliged to fall back on the old law -- that is the reality" if Kirkuk's status is not resolved, Samarrai said in a statement on the website of the Islamic Party, a Sunni grouping of which he is a member.
He said Arabs and Turkmen in Kirkuk did not accept Kurdish claims of demographic superiority.
Iraqi Kurds have long striven to expand their northern territory beyond its current three provinces to other areas where the population was historically Kurdish, leading to a dispute with Baghdad over a tract of land centred around the oil-rich province of Kirkuk.
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution calls for a referendum to decide Kirkuk's fate, which Kurds have long wanted to make the capital of their autonomous north, an aim strongly opposed by the province's Arab and Turkmen.
Parliament is set to discuss the election law on Wednesday, ahead of nation-wide legislative polls on January 16.
Samarrai called on "all factions to find a solution" so that MPs could discuss the new law.
MPs moved this month to adopt the controversial closed voting system, which would list parties contesting the election without disclosing the individuals vying to take up seats in parliament.
The proposal triggered an intervention from Iraq's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani, who called for lawmakers to accept an open process for the elections.
More than 1,000 Iraqis took to the streets on Saturday to protest the move towards a closed voting system.
A closed list was used in national elections in January 2005, the first to take place after now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein's ouster following the US-led liberation of 2003.
However, an open system listing the names of candidates and their parties was used in provincial polls held last January that were won by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's allies.
The UN's envoy in Iraq on Sunday called on MPs to "clarify the legal framework for the elections in the coming week" and expressed concern the issue had not yet been resolved.
Kirkuk city is historically a Kurdish city and it lies just south border of the Kurdistan autonomous region, the population is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs, Christians and Turkmen, lies 250 km northeast of Baghdad. Kurds have a strong cultural and emotional attachment to Kirkuk, which they call "the Kurdish Jerusalem." Kurds see it as the rightful and perfect capital of an autonomous Kurdistan state.
"Kirkuk is Kurdish, and a Kurdistani city like Erbil, Sulaimaniyah or Duhok, and is part of Kurdistan," Iraqi Kurdistan region president Massoud Barzani said on July 14. "All of the historical and geographical documents prove this."
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk city and other disputed areas through having back its Kurdish inhabitants and repatriating the Arabs relocated in the city during the former regime's time to their original provinces in central and southern Iraq.
The article also calls for conducting a census to be followed by a referendum to let the inhabitants decide whether they would like Kirkuk to be annexed to the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region or having it as an independent province.
The former regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had forced over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city and the region's oil industry.
The last ethnic-breakdown census in Iraq was conducted in 1957, well before Saddam began his program to move Arabs to Kirkuk. That count showed 178,000 Kurds, 48,000 Turkomen, 43,000 Arabs and 10,000 Assyrian-Chaldean Christians living in the city.