A sworn enemy of Saddam Hussein, the 72-year-old former outlaw was sworn in as head of state in April, his reward for dedicating a lifetime to championing Kurdish rights and half a century to fighting various Arab regimes in Baghdad.

His seven-month mandate has seen him strive to smooth strained relations with Syria and Iran, courting disapproval with allies in Washington, who accuse the two regional powers of feeding the insurgency in Iraq.

An imposing, barrel-chested man, he has won praise for his efforts, if not his success in walking a conciliatory line with Arab insurgents and disaffected Sunni Arabs who have largely boycotted the political process.

Yet with the Kurdish and Shiite-dominated government apparently powerless to contain the daily diet of bloodshed, he has warned that a premature pullout of foreign troops -- a chief Sunni Arab demand -- could be catastrophic.

A strong man who hates to be made a fool of, Talabani publicly reprimanded Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, accusing him of violating Iraqi law and exceeding his authority by taking decisions without consulting the president.

Co-leader of the Kurdish list standing in Iraq's general election on Thursday, the married father-of-two is known simply as Uncle (Mam) Jalal in his mountainous northern fiefdom of Sulaimaniyah.

Born in 1933 in the rustic Kalkan village in the depths of northern Iraq, as a young man he was quickly seduced by the Kurdish struggle for a homeland to unite a people scattered across Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria.

Today impeccably dressed in Western suits, he has an unaffected manner and a sense of humour, and is known to ask Iraqi journalists to give him the word on the street. His preferred catchphrase is: "My door is open all Iraqis".

After studying law at Baghdad university and doing a stint in the army, Talabani joined the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Mullah Mustafa Barzani and took to the hills in a first uprising against the Iraqi government in 1961.

But he famously fell out with Barzani over suing for peace with Baghdad -- the start of a long and costly internecine feud among Iraqi Kurds.

Talabani joined a Kurdish Democratic Party splinter faction in 1964 and fled to neighbouring Iran with his future father-in-law, Ahmed Ibrahim, in protest.

He formalised the break-up in 1975 by establishing his Patriotic Union of Kurdistan after Barzani's forces, abandoned by their Iranian, US and Israeli allies, were routed by Saddam Hussein's army.

Talabani's long career in troubled modern Iraq has witnessed some of the lowest moments in Kurdish history.

A renewed uprising in the 1980s against the Saddam regime sparked the notorious Anfal campaign of 1988 in which the army razed hundreds of Kurdish villages and gassed thousands of people.

Kurds were driven from their homes across north-central Iraq, particularly around the oil city of Kirkuk, as Saddam set out to Arabise the region.

Worse was to come in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war, when the Kurdish uprising collapsed, prompting hundreds of thousands to seek refuge on the mountainous borders with Iran and Turkey in the heart of winter.

Western intervention allowed the Kurds to re-establish control over the three most northerly provinces of Iraq but the rebel enclave fell far short of Kurdish claims for full independence.

The rivalry between Talabani and the Barzanis, led by Mullah Mustafa's son Massoud, degenerated to all-out war in 1993, as Talabani challenged the rival KDP monopoly over customs revenues levied at the Turkish border.

The disastrous struggle climaxed with a KDP-invited invasion and re-conquest of Arbil by Saddam's forces in 1996.

True rapprochement came only in 2002, when it became clear that Washington intended to topple Saddam. Since then Talabani and Barzani have sought to set aside their rivalries and unite to safeguard their hard-won gains.

Even today, the two men control separate fiefdoms, Talabani's in Sulaimaniyah province and Barzani's in Arbil and Dohuk to the northwest.