It said Shawis, a member of Iraqi Kurdistan's president Massud Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party, won a vote a confidence in parliament late on Monday.

Shawis, who will serve alongside a second deputy premier, Rafa al-Essawi, a Sunni, already held the same post in 2005, a year after he was a vice president of Iraq.

Saleh, meanwhile, took over as Kurdish prime minister last October following elections in northern Iraq.