This article is from the source 'bbc' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-45722528

The article has changed 2 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Iraq parliament elects Barham Salih as country's new president New Iraq President Barham Saleh names Adel Abdul Mahdi as PM
(about 17 hours later)
Iraq's parliament has elected the moderate Kurdish politician Barham Salih as president. Iraq's new President Barham Saleh has named veteran Shia Islamist politician Adel Abdul Mahdi as prime minister-designate, ending months of deadlock.
Mr Salih, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), beat his main rival Fuad Hussein, of the Kurdistan Democratic Party's (KDP), by 219 votes to 22, AFP news agency reported. Mr Saleh, a Kurdish former deputy prime minister, was elected to the largely ceremonial post by MPs late on Tuesday.
The post of president in Iraq is largely ceremonial. Soon afterwards he asked Mr Abdul Mahdi, who has served as vice-president and oil minister, to form a government.
According to a power-sharing deal, top government roles are divided between Iraq's predominant ethnic groups. The French-educated economist is the nominee of the two Shia-led blocs that won the most seats in May's elections.
Since 2003 the president has always been a Kurd, while the prime minister is a Shia Muslim and the parliamentary speaker is drawn from the Sunni Arab bloc. He will have to oversee the reconstruction of Iraq following the four-year battle against the jihadist group Islamic State (IS), which left tens of thousands of homes and business destroyed and displaced more than three million people.
"I promise to safeguard Iraq's unity and safety," Mr Salih, 58, said during his swearing-in ceremony. How was the president chosen?
Mr Salih was part of the interim government put in place by the US following the 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. Under a de facto power-sharing deal agreed in Iraq after the US-led invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, the speaker of parliament is always a Sunni Arab, the prime minister a Shia Arab, and the president a Kurd.
He went on to become deputy prime minister under Nouri Maliki and also served as prime minister in the Iraqi Kurdistan regional government. There were 20 candidates for the presidency, but it was effectively a contest between the nominees of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region's two main parties - the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
However, Mr Hussein's main backer, KDP leader Massoud Barzani, said his party rejected the parliamentary vote as there should have been a single Kurdish candidate for the presidency. Mr Saleh was the PUK's choice, while the KDP backed Fuad Hussein, the longtime chief-of-staff to former Kurdistan regional president Massoud Barzani.
He said the candidate should have come from the KDP as it was the largest Kurdish party. In the end, Mr Saleh won 219 of the votes cast by the 273 MPs who attended Tuesday's session, according to the Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi.
Mr Barzani was the architect of last year's referendum on independence for Iraqi Kurdistan. More than 90% of Kurds who took part in the ballot supported independence but Iraq's Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. Mr Saleh was reportedly the preferred candidate of MPs because of his perceived stance on independence for the Kurdistan Region, a year after the federal government and judiciary rejected the result of a referendum called by Mr Barzani in which residents overwhelmingly backed secession.
Following that vote, the Iraqi government seized disputed territory including the oil-rich province of Kirkuk. Who is Mr Saleh?
Mr Barzani later resigned as regional president. The 58 year old joined the PUK in 1976, when it was an underground organisation, and fled Iraq four years later for the UK.
After studying for a PhD in statistics in the UK, he became the PUK's spokesman there. He then served as the Kurdish envoy to the US from 1991 to 2001, before returning to Kurdistan to lead a PUK-led government.
Between 2004 and 2005 Mr Saleh was one of the deputy prime ministers in Iraq's interim government. He also served in that role from 2006 to 2009. He was then prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government until 2012.
In 2017, he broke away from the PUK after the death of its founder, Jalal Talabani, and formed a new Kurdish opposition party, the Coalition for Democracy and Justice. But last month, Mr Saleh resigned from the CDJ and rejoined the PUK.
Why did he ask Mr Abdul Mahdi to be PM?
Under Iraq's constitution, Mr Saleh had 15 days to invite the nominee of the largest bloc to form a government. But he immediately tapped Mr Abdul Mahdi.
He was the consensus candidate of the two Shia-led blocs both claiming to be the largest in parliament - one led by the populist cleric Moqtada Sadr and outgoing Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, the other by the Iran-backed paramilitary leader Hadi al-Amiri and former Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.
Mr Sadr welcomed the compromise, tweeting: "Iraq is bigger than the biggest bloc."
Who is Mr Abdul Mahdi?
The 76 year old fled Iraq in the 1960s after being condemned to death for his political activities, and settled in France. There, he gained a PhD in economics, worked for think-tanks and edited magazines.
After flirting with Maoist politics, he joined the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council - a powerful Shia Islamist organisation with close ties to Iran.
He returned to Iraq after Saddam was ousted, and as finance minister in the 2004-5 interim government he persuaded international creditors to write off Iraqi debt.
Mr Abdul Mahdi was tipped to become prime minister after the 2005 elections, but he was instead chosen to be vice-president - a position he held until 2011.
He also served for two years as oil minister under Mr Abadi, resigning in 2016 amid what he called "an atmosphere of anxiety and chaos" triggered by the decision to replace political appointees in the cabinet with unaffiliated technocrats.
Mr Abdul Mahdi was a member of SIIC until last year, when its leader Ammar al-Hakim left and established a new party called the National Wisdom Movement.