ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Delegations from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) are set to meet on Wednesday to discuss the issue of the Iraqi presidency, a PUK lawmaker said on Monday.

"The PUK and KDP will meet on Wednesday in the Kurdistan Region, and the meeting's outcome will decide the date of electing an [Iraqi] president," Harem Kamal Agha, head of the PUK’s bloc in the Iraqi parliament, told The New Region.

Sherwan Dubardani, a KDP lawmaker, told The New Region that the Iraqi parliament speaker had informed them that the session to elect a president will be held on Thursday. 

The parliament held a session on Monday, with the agenda including the election of its permanent committees, and the swearing-in ceremony for a number of the new term's lawmakers. The session did not include a vote to elect a president for the country.

The post of Iraq’s president has long been a source of contention and turmoil between the KDP and PUK, with both sides claiming their right to the position.

Successive Iraqi elections have seen both Kurdish parties at loggerheads over the presidency, fielding separate candidates. 

This time, the KDP has fielded incumbent Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein, while the PUK has nominated Nizar Amedi, Iraq’s former environment minister and the head of the party’s Baghdad office. 

The incumbent President Abdul Latif Rashid, a senior PUK member, is running independently. Lawmaker Muthanna Amin, meanwhile, is representing Kurdish opposition parties in the race.

The contentious issue has seen several meetings held between relevant parties, with the KDP and PUK having yet to see eye-to-eye on a unanimous candidate. 

A delegation from Iraq's ruling Shiite Coordination Framework, an alliance of the country's major Shiite powers, and the largest bloc in the parliament, visited Erbil last week to hold talks with Kurdish leaders regarding the government formation process in Iraq.

The Iraqi presidency, traditionally reserved for Kurds, is constitutionally required to be settled by the parliament within 30 days of the new legislature's first session, with the deadline having passed in this case on January 28.