BEIJING, March 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Kyrgyz opposition leader Kurmanbek Bakiyev said on Friday that he had been named acting president as well as prime minister, reports from Kyrgyz capital Bishkek said.

    Bakiyev, deputy head of the People's Movement of Kyrgyzstan, said he was appointed as both acting president and prime minister by the deputies of the Central Asian country.

    Following is a brief profile of the acting president:

    On Aug. 1, 1949, Bakiyev was born in the Jalal Abad region in southern Kyrgyzstan.

    He graduated from the Kuybyshev Polytechnic Institute in 1972. Between 1974 and 1976, Bakiyev served in the Soviet Army.

    From 1976 to 1979, he worked as an electrician and engineer at the Maslennikov factory in Kuybyshev.

    In 1979, Bakiyev was the deputy chief engineer at a nut and bolt factory in Jalal Abad.

    In 1991, he served as first secretary of the Kok-Yangak city council, chairman of the city's Supreme Soviet, then deputy chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Jalal Abad region. Three years later, Bakiyev became deputy chairman of the state property fund of Kyrgyzstan.

    In 1995, he was elected head of the Jalal Abad region. In 1997,he was governor of the key industrial northern Chu region.

    On Dec. 21, 2000, the Kyrgyz parliament, with a vast majority, passed President Askar Akayev's nomination of Bakiyev as prime minister.

    Bakiyev was forced to resign on May 22, 2002 after deadly clashes with opposition protesters in the south, the worst violence in the country since 1990 fighting between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks in the southern city of Osh.

    After his resignation, Bakiyev moved over to the opposition, becoming leader of the People's Movement of Kyrgyzstan and leading protests against this year's poll, in which he lost his seat in the March run-off.

    He is popular both in his native south and among the ethnic Russian workforce, who form the backbone of industry, and intellectuals in the north. Enditem