Ethnic Arab and Turkomen parties complained, as did neighboring Turkey, which is wary that Kirkuk's oil fields will be used to fund an independent Kurdish state.
"If the elections were held, Kirkuk would be the start point of a very critical situation in the country," Asi said.
Elsewhere, attention remained focused on efforts to prevent attacks on polling places.
In announcing the arrest of Jaaf, Allawi's spokesman called him the "most lethal" of Zarqawi's lieutenants. The government said Jaaf had confessed to organizing many of the most notorious attacks in Iraq, including the September 2003 truck bombing of the United Nations' Baghdad headquarters, the car bomb that killed Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir Hakim outside a shrine in Najaf, the attack that killed the president of the Governing Council as his convoy approached the Green Zone in May 2004, and the September 2004 double car bombing at a water treatment plant in south Baghdad that killed dozens of children.
All told, the attacks killed hundreds, most of them civilians.
Other bombmakers remain at large, however. A vehicle packed with explosives detonated Monday morning outside the headquarters of the political party led by Allawi, the Iraqi National Accord. In a statement posted on the Internet, Zarqawi's group claimed responsibility for the attack.
The Associated Press quoted a doctor at Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital as saying eight police officers and two civilians were wounded by the blast, which came as guards fired on the vehicle, which was speeding toward the party building's fortified entrance. The building, located near the capital's center, had been struck by a car bomb earlier this month.
Allawi's spokesman also trumpeted the arrest of Hasam Hamad Abdullah Muhsin Dulaymi, known as "Dr. Hassan" and reputed to be Zarqawi's propaganda chief. Naqib said Hassan took over distributing public statements for Zarqawi's network after his previous chief propagandist, Hassan Ibrahim, was killed by U.S.-led forces in a Baghdad raid Dec. 13.
"Dr. Hassan has told us that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi designated Abu Umar al-Kurdi as the lieutenant responsible for attacking election sites located in Baghdad," Naqib said.
Special correspondent Marwan Anie in Kirkuk contributed to this report.
