Iraq Kurds call regional vote but no date for provincial polls

"In principle, we agreed to hold the regional election on May 19," Adnan Mufti told reporters in the regional capital Arbil.

Fourteen of Iraq’s 18 provinces held elections on Saturday but those in the three autonomous Kurdish provinces of Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah were put off to a date to be determined by the Kurdish parliament.

The election in the disputed oil province of Kirkuk has been put off indefinitely.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party headed by regional president Massoud Barzani are to field a joint list for the regional election, as they did four years ago.

In the current regional parliament, their joint list controls 76 of the 111 seats. The Islamic Union of Kurdistan has nine seats and the Islamic Group of Kurdistan six.

The remaining seats are held by the regions Christian and Turkmen minorities, and other smaller groups.

The autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq’s three northern provinces was first set up in the early 1970s but it only really won genuine self-rule from the central government in Baghdad after the 1991 Gulf war.

The regional government operates its own security force, the former rebel peshmerga.

Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, Kurdish leaders have campaigned vigorously for the incorporation of Kirkuk province and parts of Nineveh and Diyala in their autonomous region.