Iraqi Kurds on Tuesday threatened to boycott national elections coming in January unless seats in the country's parliament are redistributed.

The office of Kurdistan region President Massoud Barzani complained the current distribution is unfair to Kurds.

"Unless this seat allocation formula is reconsidered in a just manner, the people of [the] Kurdistan region will be compelled to boycott the election," said a statement posted on Barzani's website.

The statement called the current division of seats "an attempt to reduce the number of Kurdistan region representatives in the next Iraqi parliament and diminish their achievements."

Iraq's Kurdish autonomous region of three provinces has its own parliament and president.

Last week, the Kurds voted in favour of a law needed to carry out the January election. However, over the weekend, they discovered that their provinces were given fewer of the Iraqi parliament's seats than they had been expecting.

Earlier this week, Iraq's Sunni Arab vice-president, Tariq al-Hashemi, also threatened to veto the national election law unless voters outside Iraq are guaranteed more seats. Most Iraqis who live abroad are Sunni.

The vote is a key factor in the continuing presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. The U.S. has said it will begin withdrawing its troops about 60 days after the vote.

Under the plan of U.S. President Barack Obama, all U.S. combat soldiers must leave Iraq by the end of August 2010. Remaining trainers and support troops must be out by the end of 2011.

With files from The Associated Press