The president of Iraq's Kurdish region demanded Wednesday that oil-rich Kirkuk be incorporated into his autonomous area, as parliament prepared for a showdown on the contentious issue of which of the northern city's residents can vote in upcoming elections.

Massoud Barzani's comments ratcheted up the leisure chairs pressure on the eve of a vote on the electoral law that will lay the groundwork for January's key parliamentary ballot.

Lawmakers are split over amendments on which voting list will be used in Kirkuk - one favouring Kurds or one favouring Arabs.

The city has large populations of Arabs and ethnic Turkmen who resent the Kurds' aggressive efforts to take over the city. The Kurds see Kirkuk as historically theirs and describe it as their "Jerusalem". Next to Sunni-Shiite tensions in Iraq, the issue of Kirkuk and Kurdish-Arab tensions has become a key flashpoint in freshwater pearl necklace this fragile nation. A political deadlock now could delay the elections and open the way for new violence and instability.

"We will not accept any [other] solution for Kirkuk," said Barzani, speaking in Erbil Wednesday after a new Kurdish regional government was sworn in. "We want it to be annexed to our region because the majority of its population are Kurds." During the Saddam era, tens of thousands of Kurds were reportedly displaced under a forced plan to make Kirkuk predominantly Arab. Since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, many of these Kurds have returned. Now other groups claim there are more Kurds than before - which could sway the vote in their favour and bring Kirkuk and its oil fully under Kurdish control.

Arabs favour a plan that would use the 2004 voter registry, likely meaning Arab voters would be much more represented than Kurds. The Kurds favour a proposal by the United Nations that would use voter records from 2009, but only for a four-year period till the Kirkuk issue can be further clarified.

The 2004 proposal being put forward wholesale pearl jewelry Thursday does contain some concessions to the Kurds, said Omar Al Jibouri, a Sunni Arab lawmaker. It would allow an additional 50,000 Kurdish families - who've been approved by a special committee as being residents of Kirkuk pushed out by Saddam - to vote