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 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 favoring Kurds or one favoring Arabs.

The city has large populations of Arabs and ethnic Turkmens 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 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 Irbil 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 displaced under a forced plan to make Kirkuk predominantly Arab. Since the 2003 U.S.-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 favor and bring Kirkuk and its oil fully under Kurdish control.

Arabs favor a plan that would use the 2004 voter registry, likely meaning Arab voters would be much more represented than Kurds. The Kurds favor 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 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.

"The parliament must be decisive in its decisions, and ... not bow to pressure," said al-Jibouri. "We hope tomorrow you see a strong parliament that can take and make decisions, and be brave in its decisions."

Those concessions seemed to hold little sway with Kurdish politicians, some of whom threatened to not even attend the vote if the 2004 option is on the table. Lawmaker Mahmoud Othman said Kurdish legislators warned the parliament speaker not to put the issue up for a vote.

If the proposal based on the 2004 list passes, Othman said Iraqi President Jalal Talabani _ who's Kurdish _ will veto it, a sign of the heavy pressure Talabani is under to align himself with his Kurdish brethren.

At least 138 of Iraq's 275 lawmakers must attend in order for the vote to go forward. A simple majority would pass the matter but it can then be vetoed by the president. Lawmakers would need 183 votes to override his veto, something that Othman said could trigger an even bigger fallout.

"If the law is passed, then we will boycott the entire elections," Othman said.

The Kurds were granted international permission to rule Iraq's three northern provinces independently from Baghdad after the 1991 Gulf war. Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Kurds have become a key group in the Baghdad-based central government.

It has been during periods of political deadlock like these that Iraq becomes particularly vulnerable to renewed violence. In 2006, months of political wrangling over the country's first permanent post-invasion government allowed al-Qaida linked insurgent groups to provoke Shiite militias into a near-civil war that tore the country apart.

The last few months have seen an upsurge in violence. On Sunday, 155 people were killed when two suicide bombers hit government buildings in Baghdad, Iraq's largest attack in over two years. On Wednesday, three women were killed in a Shiite neighborhood of Baghdad when a bomb attached to a minibus exploded, said a local police officer and a medical official at the hospital. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

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Associated Writer Yahya Barzanji in Irbil, Iraq contributed to this report.