Iraqi MPs to meet Sunday on election wrangle

The election is scheduled for mid-January but can not go ahead until the electoral law receives presidential assent.

Iraqi MPs will meet again on Sunday to try to break the deadlock on a stalled electoral law which has left the country's planned January general election in doubt.

"The vote is postponed until tomorrow," parliament speaker Iyad al-Samarrai told reporters on Saturday, after a further day of meetings failed to resolve a dispute on a key provision in the law which will govern the national poll.

The election, the second national ballot since the US-led invasion of 2003 which ousted Saddam Hussein, is scheduled for mid-January but can not go ahead until the electoral law receives presidential assent.

It ran into problems on Wednesday when Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni, and one of the war-torn country's vice-presidents, used his veto to demand a greater say for minorities and Iraqi nationals who fled after Saddam's fall.

The country's Federal Supreme Court on Thursday threw out Hashemi's request, ruling that the law was constitutional.

But MPs decided to debate his demand in any case to seek a compromise that will allow the election to go ahead on time.

Hashemi wants the law to be changed so that representation for minorities and nationals living abroad be tripled, from five percent to 15 percent of the 323 seats up for grabs.

Iraq's Sunni community, which was dominant before Saddam was toppled, leading to a takeover by the nation's majority Shiites, puts the number of nationals abroad at around four million.

Shiites say the figure is closer to one million.

Iraq's electoral commission has warned that continued delays over the voting law threaten to leave too little time to complete preparations by the scheduled polling date.