BAGHDAD, Sept. 16 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi former Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh was elected Wednesday as the new prime minister of the country's northern autonomous Kurdish region, the state-run television of Iraqia said.

    Saleh was elected for the new post after he gained 73 votes in the Kurdish 111-seat parliament, according to the report.

    Saleh, who replaces Nechirvan Barzani, had once served as prime minister of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) from 2001 to 2004.

    He is a Kurdish politician who was born in 1960, and served as deputy prime minister of Iraq since 2006.

    In August, Saleh resigned from his post as one of two deputy prime ministers in the Iraqi government.

    He was a key figure in the Kurdish alliance for the July 25 Kurdish parliamentary polls. The alliance is composed of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) headed by Masaud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish region, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

    He was elected to the Iraqi National Assembly in December 2005 as part of the Kurdistani Alliance list. Salih was also in charge of a committee on oil and energy policy.