BAGHDAD, Oct. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Kurdish regional electoral commission on Wednesday halted preparations for the presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled to be held on Nov. 1 due to current crisis in Kirkuk province.
In a statement released two weeks before the election, the regional Independent High Electoral and Referendum Commission (IHERC) said it decided to suspend the preparations for the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections due to the recent violence in Kirkuk and other disputed territories.
The suspension is due to not receiving "the names of candidates on the scheduled dates and because of the recent development (Kirkuk and disputed areas crisis)," the IHERC statement said.
It said "the suspension will continue until the parliament of Kurdistan region will take a decision about the matter."
Earlier, the IHERC set Nov. 1 to be the date for holding parliamentary and presidential elections simultaneously in the Kurdistan region.
The Kurdish regional parliament was scheduled to sit on Wednesday but the session has been postponed because of disagreements among the Kurdish political blocs over the agenda of the session.
The elections, which were set to include the disputed areas outside the Kurdistan region, came after the referendum on the independence of the region last month that sparked tensions between the two sides.
On Monday, the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, also the commander-in-chief of Iraqi forces, ordered the government forces to enter the oil-rich Kirkuk province in northern Iraq to regain control of the ethnically-mixed disputed areas.
Disagreements between Baghdad and the Kurdish regional government have been running high for years.
The ethnic Kurds consider the northern Kirkuk province and parts of Nineveh, Diyala and Salahudin provinces as disputed areas and want them to be incorporated into their region, a move fiercely opposed by the Arabs and Turkomans and by the central government in Baghdad.
