Baghdad  - Iraq's National Assembly, or parliament, on Wednesday agreed to postpone until Sunday an additional session on a law covering the conduct of elections scheduled for January.

The move, announced by assembly member Baha al-Araji at a Baghdad press conference, came after lawmakers twice failed to agree over the thorny question of voting in the contested, northern city of Kirkuk.

"The delay in reaching an agreement is a loss for everyone," Speaker of the parliament Iyad al-Samarrai said before the decision was announced. "No one benefits from the status quo."

Many Iraqi Kurds hope to make Kirkuk the capital of a future independent state. Arab Iraqi politicians, allied with the city's sizeable Turkman minority, regard Kirkuk and its nearby oilfields as an integral part of Iraq.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has called the dispute the most serious problem facing Iraq today. President Massoud Barzani, who is Kurdish, has warned the dispute could trigger a civil war if not solved peacefully.

In remarks to the German Press Agency dpa after parliament failed to agree on Tuesday night, Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman said the dispute had settled on Arab and Turkman challenges to the voter registration rolls.

Othman said that Kurdish lawmakers were willing to examine the rolls in Kirkuk only as part of a broader examination of Iraqi voter rolls for all provinces.

Also to be decided in the debate over the law is whether voters will choose between individuals, in an "open-list" vote, or for parties, in a "closed-list" vote.

Iraqi political parties have been seeking a consensus solution to both debates. Failing that, the law will come to a majority vote to allow the elections to take place on time.(dpa)