Iraq will delay its first general census in two decades which was slated to be held on October 24, Planning Minister Ali Baban said on August 16.
The delay was due to political disputes, Baban told reporters after meeting with Iraq's most revered Shiite cleric Ali al-Sistani in the holy city of Najaf, some 160 km south of Baghdad.
"The Planning Ministry is ready to hold the census technically, but we have heard some reservations from political parties in Kirkuk and Nineveh provinces, so we decided to delay it to another time," he said.
The two provinces are in northern Iraq bordering the autonomous Kurdish region. The central government and the Kurdish regional authorities are in profound land disputes in the two provinces.
Iraq's latest census was conducted in 1987 under Saddam Hussein regime, which showed that the total population of Iraq then was 16million.
However, the United Nations puts the latest figure of Iraq's population at 29.6 million. Earlier UN estimates showed that Iraq's population is growing by 2.68 percent every year, about 666,000 annually. By mid-century, the country's population is projected to reach 58 million.
