ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – A visit by an Iraqi parliament delegation to urge the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) to return to parliament sessions has been delayed until a prime minister nominee is finalized, a KDP lawmaker said on Sunday. 

On April 18, the KDP announced that it will boycott all future sessions of the Iraqi parliament indefinitely, in light of the legislature’s decision to proceed with the Iraqi presidential election despite the absence of a national consensus. 

The Iraqi parliament late last week formed a delegation to visit Erbil and meet with the KDP’s leadership and parliamentary bloc to persuade the party to end its boycott of the legislature. 

“The delegation’s visit has been postponed, and this is linked to a delay in the Coordination Framework’s meeting regarding the finalization of a candidate for prime minister,” Sherwan Dubardani, a KDP lawmaker in the Iraqi parliament, told The New Region. 

Dubardani said that Baghdad wants to settle on a candidate for the premiership before the delegation visits Erbil. 

Earlier in April, the KDP, the State of Law Coalition, and the Hoquq Movement boycotted the session where Iraq’s new president was elected, citing continued disputes and the absence of a unified position on who should assume the key role.

During the session, Nizar Amedi of the rivaling Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) was elected for the top post.

The KDP at the time rejected the mechanism by which Amedi was elected president, a post traditionally reserved for Kurds, saying his nomination had been pushed forward by a single Kurdish party and other Iraqi components and was not a unanimous Kurdish pick.

The two Kurdish ruling parties failed to reach a unanimous candidate for the presidency after months of negotiations following the elections.