Barzani's Image Improved - His Background.

This was something of a setback for Barzani and Talabani, since the KDP and PUK, which had campaigned jointly in 2005, had previously controlled 78 seats in parliament. But Barzani's presidential victory was expected in view of his dominant role. After decades of tireless work as a guerilla leader, Barzani is once again being recognised as the legitimate representative of his people.

During Saddam's Sunni/Ba'thist dictatorship, Barzani had to endure the killing of three of his brothers and many other members of his family. His native village, Barzan, was razed 16 times by military regimes of Baghdad. Kurds have genuine respect for his leadership, although there is muted criticism of Barzani's administration by those who accuse him of corruption and nepotism.

Qazi Muhammad, elected in the short-lived Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in 1946, was the first president of Kurdistan, with Barzani's father the late Mulla Mustafa Barzani then having become leader of a pan-Kurdish movement; but the latter's power base was tribal. Mas'oud Barzani was the second president, ruling from 2005.

The US in the early 1970s was a strong backer of Kurdish activism and Mulla Mustafa Barzani, an alliance then brokered Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In 1974, Kissinger encouraged the Kurds to riot in order to sap the energy of the Iraqi Army and divert Baghdad's attention away from supporting Syria's war against Israel. Kissinger was generous to the Kurds. That prompted Mulla Mustafa to send him expensive rugs as a token of appreciation and a gold necklace for his bride on the occasion of Kissinger's marriage in March 1974.

Now many observers are concerned that the July 25 elections in Kurdistan could back-fire on the central government and Maleki. But Maleki has described the vote as "another step in building a democratic Iraq".

Relations between Baghdad and Barzani had been at an all-time low for months, due to a prolonged stalemate over the fate of Kirkuk, which is estimated to have 10bn barrels of oil reserves and can eventually produce almost half of the country's crude oil exports.

Upholding Kurdish rights in Kirkuk was among Barzani's most effective campaign slogans. The referendum was first scheduled for November 2007, but has been delayed ever since by Baghdad. One observer once described the situation by saying: "Kirkuk is the prize the Sunni Arabs lost, the Kurds want and the Shi'ite Arabs will not give up. He who controls Kirkuk controls Iraq's oil and Iraq's wealth". For that reason, Iraqi Arabs remain reluctant to relinquish control of Kirkuk.

In 2007, Maleki and his Shi'ite Arab allies toyed with the idea of ceding Kirkuk to the Kurds. Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) which has been the main Shi'ite Arab partner in the Baghdad government, believed that if the Kurds were given more autonomy, they would support his bid to create a similar autonomous enclave for the Shi'ites in southern Iraq.

The Sunnis Arabs, however, were strongly opposed to SIIC's plan, fearing that if the Kurds got control of oil in the north and the Shi'ites got the same in the south, they would be left in central Iraq where there is much less oil. Maliki himself in 2007 visited Kirkuk, and oversaw the transfer of Iraqi Arabs from that city to other parts of Iraq, claiming that they had been illegally brought there as part of Saddam's "Arabisation" of the oil-rich area.

That was at a low-point period for Maleki, when he desperately needed the Kurdish support to keep his cabinet coalition alive, while the blocs of the secular Iyad Allawi, Sh'ite Muqtada al-Sadr and Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF) collectively walked out on him. But now the situation has changed in favour of the Kurds again, though only after a recent tension between Erbil and Baghdad.

Last June, pershmerga units close to Barzani clashed with the Iraqi Army in Makhmur, a predominantly Kurdish town between Mosul and Kirkuk. Barzani then said neither his men, nor the Iraqi Army, had the right to move into areas claimed by the Kurds. His nephew PM Nechirvan said Maleki's men had "a military-style mentalitywanting to impose their will [on others]".

Now for Maleki, however, the outcome of the January 2010 parliamentary and local elections is crucial to his power base. He seems to be bent on winning another term as PM and Kurdish support for his bloc is important. Yet he has to reconcile his tilt to the Kurds with his need of support from the Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs.

Talabani seems to be taking care of the latter challenge. He is on excellent terms with the SIIC, the largest among Iraq's Shi'ite Arab parties, and had good ties with the IAF which is the biggest Sunni bloc in parliament. Talabani is especially close to Iraq's Shi'ite VP Adel Abdul-Mahdi, a senior member of SIIC's leadership while Hakim is seriously ill with cancer and his son Ammar is still too young to control his father's party. Ammar needs the support of Abdul-Mahdi, who has close links to Sunni Arab leaders. The friendship between Talabani and Abdul-Mahdi dates back to the 1970s, when the former was a Marxist and the latter was a member of the Iraqi Communist Party.

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