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Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani named Iraq president

by sources
Iraq's parliament has chosen Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as the country's new president after the first elections since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
His deputies will be former President Ghazi Yawer, a Sunni Arab, and Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who is Shia.

The presidential team will nominate the key role of prime minister who will lead Iraq until new polls in December.

Shia politician Ibrahim Jaafari is expected to be named prime minister in the coming days.

The Shia and Kurdish blocs agreed the nominations with Sunni parties on Tuesday, ending weeks of political deadlock since elections in January.

The ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein watched the session on television in jail, officials said.

Kurdish victory

Members of the new parliament, dressed in tribal robes, business suits and religious garments, cast their secret ballots in the assembly inside Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.

The votes were then counted publicly.

The three candidates received 227 votes, while 30 ballots were left blank, according to AP news agency.

Thanking parliament, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader Mr Talabani said it was a step towards a free, democratic Iraq after long years of dictatorship.

His appointment is a major political victory for Iraq's Kurdish community, which suffered greatly under Saddam Hussein.

It makes room for his long-time rival - Kurdistan Democratic Party chief Massoud Barzani - to head an autonomous government in the Kurdish region in the north of Iraq.

"We are happy that the first elected president of Iraq is coming from a community that has been persecuted for years," Shia MP Hussein Shahrastani told AFP news agency.

But the BBC's Caroline Hawley in Baghdad says differences remain between the Shias and Kurds, in particular over who should control the important oil ministry.

Iraq's politicians are also trying to allocate jobs to Sunni Muslims, who largely boycotted the elections, in an effort to try to draw support away from the continuing insurgency, she says.

Watched by Saddam

Kurdish MP and outgoing foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari said a new cabinet headed by Mr Jaafari will be approved "within a few days", AFP reported.

The transitional government's main task will be to oversee the drafting of a permanent Iraqi constitution and pave the way for elections in December.

Iraqi officials said Saddam Hussein and members of his former regime watched the proceedings on television in jail.

"I decided that Saddam and the 11 others will watch it on the television," Iraqi Human Rights minister Bakhtiar Amin told AFP before the session.

"There will be a place in jail for Saddam and the 11 to watch the TV to understand their time is finished, there is a new Iraq and that they are no longer ruling the country; so they can understand that in the new Iraq, people are elected and they are not coming to power by a coup d'etat."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4415459.stm

The Iraqi parliament has chosen Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as the country's new interim president, reaching out to the nation's Kurdish minority and bringing the country closer to its first democratically elected government in 50 years.

Ousted members of the former government - including toppled leader Saddam Hussein - were allowed to watch the event on Wednesday on television in their prison cells, Iraqi officials said.

Shia Adil Abd al-Mahdi and current interim President Ghazi al-Yawir, a Sunni Arab, were chosen as Talabani's two vice-presidents.

After weeks of negotiations, the three were the only candidates and received a total of 227 votes. Thirty ballots were left blank.

Congratulations

The announcement that Talabani won drew applause, and many lawmakers crowded around him to offer congratulations. He was expected to be sworn in on Thursday.

"This is the new Iraq, where no sect or minority controls the whole country," Parliament Speaker Hajim al-Hasani said. "It is an Iraq where all the people are unified."

Talabani said he would work to secure his troubled nation and pledged "to establish an independent and united Iraqi state based on democracy, federalism and human rights".

"We will spare no effort to present Iraq as a model of democracy... We hope to consolidate national unity ... regardless of religious and sectarian backgrounds," he said.

Talabani called on neighbouring countries to prevent foreign fighters from crossing into Iraq.

"Our people are patient," he said. "But there's a limit to their patience."

Kurdish victory

The Kurdish-led coalition won 75 of the 275 parliament seats in the 30 January elections, a major victory for a group that spent years fighting Saddam Hussein's government.

Human Rights Minister Bakhtiyar Amin said lawmakers had asked that the ousted president and other jailed members of his former government be shown the process.

"There will be televisions there, and they will be seeing it today," he said.

Captured in December 2003, the former president has been in custody with several of his top men at a US-guarded detention facility.

"This is a very important session because this is the first time in Iraq's history that the president and his deputies are elected in a legitimate and democratic way by

the Iraqi people," interim Vice-President Ruwsh Nuri Shaways said.

"That's why the Iraqi government thought it would be beneficial that the former dictator see this unique process."

US pullout

The interim National Assembly must write a permanent constitution by 15 August.

The constitution, along with elections for a permanent government scheduled for December, are all central parts of the US government's eventual pullout.

On Thursday, lawmakers plan to name Shia leader Ibrahim al-Jafari prime minister. Lawmakers have also started discussions on candidates to serve in the cabinet.

In related news, the US military said in a statement on Wednesday that a Task Force Baghdad soldier was killed a day earlier when his patrol was hit by a bomb.
Aljazeera + Agencies

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/4450D027-8F9A-43F4-95C9-E8C9E63805DE.htm
by more
The two-month political deadlock over the make-up of Iraq's new leadership ended with the election of the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as president today.

More than nine weeks after the January 30 elections, the Iraqi parliament voted in Mr Talabani - a veteran of the Kurds' Saddam-era struggles for independence - and paved the way for a new government in Baghdad.

A presidential council of Mr Talabani and his two deputies, the former president Ghazi Yawer, a Sunni Arab tribal leader, and the finance minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi - who is a Shia - will now appoint a prime minister to lead Iraq until the next set of elections take place in December.

Their choice, to be announced within the next two weeks, is expected to be Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a conservative Islamist also from the majority Shia community.

However, the election of Mr Talabani, Iraq's first Kurdish president, reflects the largely pro-US minority's clout in post-war Iraq. On paper, the Iraqi presidency is a largely ceremonial post, but the presence of 72-year-old Mr Talabani in Baghdad will prove influential.

"This is the new Iraq - an Iraq that elects a Kurd to be president and an Arab former president as his deputy," the parliamentary speaker, Hajem al-Hassani, said after the vote. "What more could the world want from us?"

Mr Talabani, who was hailed by a standing ovation in parliament, pledged to work with all ethnic and religious factions to rebuild Iraq after decades of conflict and dictatorship.

For weeks, the Islamist-led Shia alliance that won a slim majority in parliament and the Kurdish coalition that came second in the polls have been arguing about forming a government.

Kurdish parties were especially keen to counter Shia influence by including representatives of the Sunni Arab minority in a national unity government.

Disagreement over which Sunni would be vice-president held up a deal, but political leaders decided late yesterday to favour Mr Yawar over elder statesman Adnan Pachachi.

Frustration among Iraqis who braved suicide bombs and threats to vote grew as the wrangling went on. Some key decisions - such as who occupies the important oil and defence ministries - remain to be made.

Many Iraqis complained that politicians had let them down by taking so long to form a government, fearing the delay could have benefited Iraq's still active insurgency. A western diplomat in Baghdad told the Associated Press: "The people are waiting for success, while the insurgents are waiting for failure."

According to the interim law, Mr Jaafari will have two weeks to form a government, which must be approved by a two-thirds vote in parliament.

Even if an administration can be named, the future of a Shia-Kurdish alliance looks shaky. The secular Kurds are seeking to distance their region from the central government. The Shia-led alliance is backed by the religious establishment in Najaf, and is dominated by Islamists, many of whom are centralisers.

There have been suspicions that some secular-minded leaders were deliberately holding up progress to undermine Mr Jaafari.

"There is little common ground other than a shared past of resistance against Saddam Hussein," one western observer in Baghdad said. "There does not seem to be any clarity about the future."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1453415,00.html
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