The committees agreed to delay voting on immunity for the admiral until today and to defer actually questioning him in private until May 2.

But local calls for special security will delay voting in the two states until June - after the swearing-in of the new federal government.

However, his controversial win has been credited to procedural manipulation by Robertson supporters who delayed final voting until late into the evening when other supporters had gone home.

Yesterday some of those groups urged the authority to delay voting in order to consider both proposals carefully.

The court should stick with its decision to delay voting until March.

The rapporteur can ask the Commission to make an additional statement on any accepted amendment, and he may propose to delay voting on a draft legislative resolution.

The request to delay voting until the next part-session in Strasbourg will hopefully enable the last few discussions between the groups to be resolved.

But two commissioners expressed reservations about taking such an action and persuaded the commission to delay voting on the matter for several weeks.

A peace deal that ended years of war in Congo set June 30 as the election day but allowed the government to delay voting for up to a year.

The concern about digital signature verification that is delaying online voting prevents online registration as well.