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

Adel Abdul-Mahdi, a Shia, 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.

Mr Talabani, whose election as president drew applause, is expected to be sworn in to his post Thursday. He said he would work to secure his troubled nation, and he called on neighbouring countries to help in the fight by preventing foreign insurgents from crossing into Iraq. "Our people are patient," he said. "But there’s a limit to their patience."

The Kurdish-led coalition won 75 of the 275 parliament seats in the January 30 elections, a major victory for a group that spent years fighting Saddam’s regime. Kurds make up 20 per cent of the country’s 26 million people; Shia make up 60 per cent and the Sunni Arabs are roughly 15 to 20 per cent.

Ousted members of the country’s former regime, including Saddam Hussein, were allowed to watch the event on televisions in their prison cells. Human Rights Minister Bakhtiyar Amin told the Associated Press 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 American-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."

The interim National Assembly must write a permanent constitution by August 15. The constitution, along with elections for a permanent government scheduled for December, are all central parts to the United States’s eventual pullout.

On Thursday, the Shia leader Ibrahim al-Jaafari will be named prime minister. Discussions have started on candidates to serve in the Cabinet.

A video yesterday from al-Qaeda in Iraq, claimed to show a man in his twenties, identified as Iraqi soldier Jassim Mohammed Hussein Mahdi, being beheaded for working with the US-allied government. The authenticity of the tape, posted on a militant website that carries most al-Qaeda in Iraq statements, could not immediately be verified. A second video posted yesterday on the same website by another group, Ansar al-Sunnah Army, claimed to show a masked gunman shooting a man who said he was an informer. In the footage the man, who identified himself as Hussein Taha Qassim, said he worked as an informer for police in the northern city of Mosul. The video’s authenticity also could not be verified. Ansar al-Sunnah has claimed to have kidnapped and killed several foreigners.

Times Recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
• More than 17,000 new underwater species found