In the face of staunch opposition to demands for self-determination from powerful neighbours Iran and Turkey which also have large Kurdish minorities, Barzani has since the US-led invasion of 2003 limited his calls to self-rule within the Iraqi state.

But as the son of iconic Kurdish nationalist leader Mulla Mustafa Barzani. who ruled the only breakaway state in Kurdish history based in the Iranian town of Mahabad, Massud has taken a strong line on longstanding Kurdish demands for self-rule within all historically Kurdish-populated areas of Iraq.

Those demands have put him on a collision course with the Arab-led government in Baghdad and have also made him appear an increasingly prickly figure to UN and US diplomats attempting to broker a compromise solution to the conflicting positions of the two sides.

Born on August 16, 1946 in Mahabad, capital of the Kurdish republic declared by his father amid the post-World War II unrest in Iran, Barzani joined the fight for an independent Kurdistan while a teenager.

He took over the leadership of his father's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in 1979 and has held the position ever since.

In the early 1970s, his father's movement returned to war with the Baghdad government rather than accept the limited autonomy over just three northern provinces they currently enjoy.

Massud has since repeatedly refused to renounce the claim to the historically Kurdish-populated northern Iraqi oil hub of Kirkuk that saw the rebels suffer a disastrous defeat in 1975, which they blamed on their one-time Iranian and US patrons, before taking up arms again in the 1980s.

Massud Barzani's insistence on the right to self-determination for Kirkuk, which is enshrined in Iraq's post-invasion constitution, has been a thorn in the side for the US-led coalition, for whom the Kurdish rebel factions were a key ally.

Kurdish demands to incorporate the city in their northern autonomous region are opposed not only by the Arab migrants Saddam Hussein's regime settled in the area in a bid to dilute its historical Kurdish majority but also by its ethnic Turkmen minority and powerful neighbour Turkey.

Barzani still frequently wears the Kurdish costume of baggy pants, cummerbund and headscarf, that was favoured by the peshamerga rebels during their rebellions against successive Baghdad regimes.

Western diplomats accuse him of having a short temper but he insists he is doing no more than demanding the Kurds' rights after the genocide they suffered under Saddam's regime.

Barzani's powerbase lies among the Kurmanji-speaking Kurds of Iraq's far northern mountains along the Turkish border.

His KDP movement had been at odds for decades with the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Jalal Talabani who is now Iraqi president.

For a decade and a half after the 1991 Gulf War gave real substance to the Kurds' northern autonomy, the KDP and PUK ran rival administrations in their respective areas of control -- Dohuk province for Barzani and Sulaimaniyah for Talabani, with Arbil province in between as a battlegound between the two.

But a decade after the 1994-1998 internecine war between the Iraqi Kurdish foes, in which Barzani called in the support of Saddam and Talabani that of the neighbouring Islamic republic, the two movements struck an agreement to contest elections as a joint bloc and in 2005 Barzani was elected regional president.