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BAGHDAD, Apr 6 (Agencies): Iraq's parliament elected veteran Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani Wednesday as the country's first-freely elected president with Shi'ite candidate Adel Abdul Mahdi and Sunni Arab Ghazi Yawar picked as vice presidents.
The vote ended weeks of political deadlock and paved the way for the formation of a new government.
Political leaders said Islamist Shi'ite politician Ibrahim Jaafari will be named prime minister Thursday.
The choice of Talabani by the 275-seat assembly is a major political victory for the long-suffering Kurdish minority in Iraq, which was violently oppressed under ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.
Iraqi lawmakers predicted a new government should be in place by next week.
A giant Iraqi flag behind him, Talabani was sworn in almost two years to the day since Saddam was ousted in a US-led invasion, and pledged to heal Iraq's ethnic and religious fissures.
"We will spare no effort to present Iraq as a model of democracy... We hope to consolidate national unity... regardless of religious and sectarian backgrounds," he said.
Talabani and his two deputies, who ran unopposed after weeks of bartering among Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis, were elected by 228 members of the parliament. Around 29 MPs cast absentee ballots, while 18 MPs did not attend.
The assembly erupted in applause when the names were announced, bringing to an end the tortuous negotiations that risked losing the faith of the Iraqi people in government after they risked their lives to vote on January 30.
"There will be a place in jail for Saddam and the 11 to watch the TV to understand their time is finished, there is a new Iraq and that they are no longer ruling the country; so they can understand that in the new Iraq, people are elected and they are not coming to power by a coup d'etat," Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin told AFP.
Deputy parliament speaker Shiite MP Hussein Shahrastani said the presidency council would be sworn in Thursday at 3:00pm (1100 GMT) when they would nominate Shiite fundamentalist Jaafari as premier.
Meanwhile, a US soldier was killed when insurgents ambushed a patrol in Baghdad with a roadside bomb and small arms fire, the American military said Wednesday.
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