A veteran nationalist known simply as "Mum (uncle) Jalal" in his fiefdom in Iraq's northern mountains, the imposing barrel-chested Talabani, a man who always marched to his own drum, comes to Baghdad on a mission to ensure the Kurds are never again persecuted by Iraq's central government.

      The success of his presidency could greatly improve Kurdistan's ties with Iraq's Arabs. Likewise, a stormy tenure in the capital could poison the strained relationship, burdened by years of bad blood.

      Talabani was born in 1933 in the Rustic Kalkan village 400 kilometres (300 miles) northeast of Baghdad and quickly came under the spell of the Kurdish struggle to carve out a homeland for the hardy mountain people, who are scattered across Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria.

      He forswore his dreams of becoming a doctor at age 15 to study law since he thought it would give him more time to devote to Kurdish politics.

      He served in the Iraqi army before being inspired to join the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Mullah Mustafa Barzani and took to the hills when the pioneering nationalist leader led a first uprising against Baghdad in 1961.      But he fell out with Barzani when he sued for peace with the government, joining a Kurdish Democratic Party splinter faction in 1964 and fleeing to neighbouring Iran with his future father-in-law, Ahmed Ibrahim, in protest at a ceasefire order.

      The split was to mark the start of a long and and costly internecine feud among Iraqi Kurds.

      Talabani formalised the breakaway in 1975, establishing his own Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) after the Iraqi army routed Barzani's forces when the United States and Israel abandoned their support.  Talabani founded the PUK as an alternative to the KDP, which he described as grounded in tribalism.

      The new party was to be based on socialist ideals and enjoyed popularity in urban areas. The rival movements have dominated Kurdish life for four decades and witnessed some of the lowest moments in their people's history.

      A renewed uprising in the 1980s against Saddam Hussein’s 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 Persian Gulf War, when the Kurdish uprising collapsed, prompting hundreds of thousands of Kurds to seek refuge on the mountainous borders with Iran and Turkey in the heart of winter.

      Western intervention was to allow the Kurds to re-establish control over Iraq's three far-northern provinces but the rebel enclave fell far short of Kurdish claims.

      Despite repeated mediation attempts by London and Washington, there was also no let-up in the longstanding rivalry between Talabani and the Barzanis, now led by Mullah Mustafa's son Massoud.

      Their rivalry degenerated to all-out war in 1993, as Talabani challenged the rival KDP monopoly over customs revenues levied at the Turkish border.

      The two groups finally agreed a ceasefire in 1996 and a formal peace treaty in 1998 but a true rapprochement came only in 2002, when it became clear US president George W. Bush intended to topple Saddam.

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

      Since the US-led invasion of March 2003, the two men have sought to set aside their rivalries and make common cause as they look to guard their hard-won gains in post-war Iraq and went into the 30 January elections with advance agreement on a division of the spoils.