"July 25 will be the date of the parliamentary elections," Barzani told MPs. "I want everyone participating in the elections to respect political pluralism because this is guaranteed to strengthen the experience of Kurdistan."

"I also call on the people of Kurdistan to participate in these elections and to pick their representatives with complete freedom, to chose the lists that will best serve them."

The Kurdish election will be held seven months after provincial elections were held in most of the rest of Iraq, the first vote in the country since 2005.

Barzani ordered the political parties not to campaign in mosques and other public areas and said they should refrain from attacking their opponents.

"The political entities are free to campaign but they must not use the campaign to demonise any faction," he said.

About 2.5 million people are eligible to vote, according to the Kurdistan election commission, and more than 40 political entities have registered to contest the 111 seats in the assembly.

Two parties have dominated Kurdish politics for decades -- Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

The PUK and KDP will run on a joint list but are widely expected to lose seats to a range of new challengers in a race that many fear could turn violent.

Jawhar Nameq Salem, the former head of the KDP's political office and the first speaker of the regional parliament, a post he held for eight years, said the autonomous regional government will have to rein in factional fighting.

"The two main parties are the ones which will resort to violence because they will lose a lot," he told AFP earlier this month. "I expect to see brave new faces."

The Independent High Electoral Commission of Iraq, which supervised the country's provincial council elections in January, will oversee the vote and has certified 41 political entities, with one final application pending.

Those registered include a breakaway group from the PUK, the "Change" list led by Talabani's former deputy Nushirwan Mustafa. His is a rare challenge to the decades-old political powerhouse that has alarmed some PUK leaders.

But on Sunday Talabani said he thought the "vast majority" of supporters would stay with his party and said he hoped the elections would be peaceful.

"The doors should be open to all lists and political entities. Everyone knows there will be intellectual and political conflicts, but I hope the elections can be held in a civilised way," he told reporters.

Two Islamist parties -- the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Islamic Union and the more radical Islamic Group -- are among the smaller groups expected to gain seats at the expense of the two major parties.

The three Kurdish provinces that make up the autonomous region and the disputed province of Kirkuk did not take part in the relatively violence-free provincial polls held in Iraq's 14 other provinces on January 31.