JALAL TALABANI, the former guerrilla leader who once fought Saddam Hussein’s forces, was named Iraq’s first Kurdish President yesterday — as the deposed dictator watched the historic vote on television in his jail cell.

The spectre of criminal punishment also hung over members of the US-appointed outgoing caretaker Government led by Iyad Allawi. The head of Iraq’s anti-corruption bureau told The Times that bribery had been rife during the interim administration and that at least two ministers were under investigation.

Mr Talabani, 72, is the founder and head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and a lifelong activist, political leader and guerrilla who took up arms for the Kurdish cause in 1961.

He and his two vice-presidents — Sheikh Ghazi alYawar, a Sunni Arab and outgoing interim President, and Adel Abdel Mehdi, a French-educated Shia leader who held the finance portfolio under Mr Allawi — were approved by the assembly after a deal between the Shia-dominant block and the powerful Kurdish group.

Mr al-Yawar’s appointment is designed to placate Sunnis who shunned the January elections. The three-member presidency council will now have the power to appoint and dismiss the prime minister. That post is due to go today to Ibrahim al-Jafaari, a Shia leader who has held high office since the fall of Saddam’s regime.

In an effort to prove to Saddam — who still claims to be Iraq’s legitimate leader — that his regime was finally gone, the jailed ex-President was furnished with a television to watch the parliamentary vote at a US top-security prison at Baghdad Airport.

“I decided that Saddam and the 11 others [jailed regime leaders] will watch it on the television,” Bakhtiar al-Amin, Iraq’s interim Human Rights Minister, said. “There will be a place in jail for Saddam and the 11 to watch the TV to understand their time is finished.”

The US military would not say whether Saddam had watched Mr Talabani accepting a standing ovation, handshakes and kisses from deputies relieved to have a President after more than two months of hard bargaining between the Shia and Kurdish blocks, but as a reminder that his brutal legacy still lingers, a mortar round crashed into the street outside the Ministry of Agriculture and a terrorist cell posted a video on the internet showing the beheading of a man said to be a captured Iraqi soldier.

Mr Talabani gave a rousing speech to the assembly. He pledged that Iraq would be a friend to those who aid her but a fierce foe to those who try to harm her — a clear warning to neighbouring states, such as Syria, accused of backing the insurgency. “The Iraqi people are a patient people, but patience always has a limit,” he said.

In a conciliatory gesture to any Iraqi guerrillas “carrying weapons out of patriotic and anti-occupation motives”, he added: “Those people are our brothers and it is possible to talk with them.”

Hachem al-Hassani, the assembly’s Speaker, was clearly relieved that the political impasse had finally been broken two months after millions of Iraqis risked their lives by voting. “This is the new Iraq, where a Kurd is elected President and the Vice-President is a Sunni Arab.” he said. “What more could the world want?” The assembly was divided over when the interim Government should dissolve itself, with Abdel Mehdi, the new Shia Vice-President, demanding it do so as quickly as possible. In an accusation that appeared to presage a drive against corruption, he claimed that the defence and interior ministries had created thousands of unauthorised jobs. “Of course there’s wideranging corruption, ” Mr Abdel Mehdi said. “It’s been deep-rooted since Saddam’s time.”

Judge Radhi al-Radhi, head of the anti-corruption unit, said that at least two outgoing ministers were under investigation for corruption, and that an estimated $50 million (£26 million) had disappeared during Mr Allawi’s government. He said that investigators were also looking into a cash-in-hand arms deal with a Lebanese company, worth $300 million, authorised by Mr Allawi and Hazem al-Shalaan, his Defence Minister. Asked if any senior officials from the outgoing administration could go to court, Judge Raadi said: “Yes, it’s possible.”

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