NA 21 Spokeswoman Kim Haeng said that the basic decision of TV debates followed by a poll remained the same, but a new sampling method would be chosen.

The two parties initially agreed on Sunday to pick and officially announce a unified candidate on November 26 who will challenge the current poll leader Lee Hoi-Chang of the Grand National Party. The two presidential candidates planned to hold three to four sessions of live televised debates for three days starting Wednesday, before conducting a public opinion poll on November 25.

They planned to have three polling agencies conduct a public survey on a total of 5400 people, where the final candidate with higher popularity in more than two surveys will clinch the candidacy even if the gap between their popularity comes by a small margin.

Lee's MDP counterpart Lee Hae-chan apologized for the leak, but said he didn't think it would make any difference. The two camps began immediate talks on choosing the new means of selecting the single candidate.

In related news, the Central Election Management Committee ruled that Roh and Chung could only have one TV debate, managed by a political party or outside body, not the television stations.

GNP Spokesman Nam Kyung-pil said the CEMC decision was regrettable as it was governed by politics and not law, adding that the party will decisively counter illegal election activity. Nam continued that the Election Broadcasting Review Committee should rule the debate illegal.

The MDP and NA21 also expressed dissatisfaction with the CEMC ruling and said they would appeal for more air time. (Choi Joon-seok, jschoi@chosun.com )