Iraq's new president Masum: thinker and fighter

Quiet and bookish, Iraq's president-elect Fuad Masum is different from jocular incumbent Jalal Talabani, but sharp political skills forged in the long battle for Kurdish self-determination are common to both. Masum, an ethnic Kurd, fought a rebel war alongside childhood friend Talabani for a separate Kurdish homeland, and in 1992 became the first prime minister of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region. Something of a political pioneer, Masum was also the speaker of the first Iraqi parliamen