NAJAF: Iraq will delay indefinitely its first census in two decades because of political wrangling over disputed areas in the country's north, Planning Minister Ali Baban said on Sunday.

The census was due to have been held on October 24.

"The planning ministry is ready to do the census technically," Baban told reporters following talks with Iraq's supreme Shiite religious authority Ali Husseini al-Sistani in the holy city of Najaf.

"But because of some reservations from some political parties in Kirkuk and Nineveh provinces, we have decided to delay it to another time," he added, without specifying a date.

Planning ministry spokesman Abdul Zahra al-Hindawi said the census could potentially be held in April or October 2010.

Kirkuk and Nineveh provinces are both in northern Iraq bordering the autonomous Kurdistan region, and are at the centre of a land dispute between the central government in Baghdad and Kurdish authorities in Arbil.

The census was set to be the first conducted nationwide since 1987, when the ousted regime of Saddam Hussein was still on good terms with the West before its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

That count gave a total population figure of 16 million. The United Nations puts the current population at 29.6 million.