The Iraqi parliament chose Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani as the country's new interim president yesterday, reaching out to the nation's long-repressed Kurdish minority and bringing the country closer to its first democratically elected government in 50 years.
Ousted members of the country's former regime -- including toppled leader Saddam Hussein -- were allowed to watch the event on televisions in their prison cells, Iraqi officials said.
Shiite Adel Abdul-Mahdi and interim President Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni Arab, were also 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.
The announcement that Talabani won drew applause, and many lawmakers crowded around him to offer congratulations. He was expected to be sworn in to his post today.
"This is the new Iraq, where no sect or minority controls the whole country," parliament speaker Hajim al-Hassani said.
"It is an Iraq where all the people are unified," he said.
Talabani said he would work to secure his troubled nation, and he called on neighboring countries to help in the fight by preventing foreign insurgents from crossing into Iraq.
"Our people are patient, but there's a limit to their patience," he said.
The Kurdish-led coalition won 75 of the 275 parliament seats in the Jan. 30 elections, a major victory for a group that spent years fighting Saddam's regime.
Kurds make up 20 percent of the country's 26 million people; Shiites make up 60 percent and the Sunni Arabs are roughly 15 percent to 20 percent.
Human Rights Minister Bakhtiyar Amin said that lawmakers had asked that Saddam 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.
Saddam, captured in December 2003, has been in custody with several of his top henchmen 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 Rowsch Nouri Shaways said.
"That's why the Iraqi government thought it would be beneficial that the former dictator see this unique process," he said.
The interim National Assembly must write a permanent constitution by Aug. 15. The constitution, along with elections for a permanent government scheduled for December, are all central parts to the US government's eventual pullout.
Today, lawmakers plan to name Shiite leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari prime minister. Lawmakers have also started discussions on candidates to serve in the Cabinet.
The US military said in a statement yesterday that a Task Force Baghdad soldier was killed a day earlier when his patrol was hit by a bomb and attacked by insurgent gunmen.
Four other US service members were killed on Monday and Tuesday in an upsurge in violence, the military said.
A Marine was killed on Monday by an explosion in Anbar province, while two US soldiers died in a joint attack the same day on dozens of insurgents in eastern Diyala province. The third US soldier was killed by a bomb Tuesday in Baghdad.
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