BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was responding to treatment on Wednesday after suffering a stroke that raised fears of a messy succession battle to replace the Kurd leader who has mediated among Iraq's competing factions.
"He is showing clear signs of improvement," Najmaldin Karim, the governor of Iraq's Kirkuk city who is also a doctor, told Reuters.
The 79-year-old former guerrilla, who has helped ease tensions among Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Kurds and in the growing dispute over oil between Baghdad and the country's autonomous Kurdistan, was admitted to hospital on Monday night.
He was in intensive care with a specialist team including doctors from Germany, where he received treatment in the past.
Under Iraq's constitution, parliament elects a new president if his post becomes vacant. Iraq's power-sharing deal calls for the presidency to go to a Kurd while two vice president posts are shared by a Sunni and a Shi'ite.
Talabani survived wars, exile and infighting in northern Iraq to become the country's first Kurdish president a few years after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
He has since been pivotal in navigating through the political turmoil in Iraq's fragile power-sharing government that is split among Shi'ite Muslims, Sunni Muslims and ethnic Kurds who also run their own autonomous enclave in the north.
"He is the Kurd who is closest to the centre. He is so close to the Shi'ites and to the Sunnis," said Iraqi political analyst Ibrahim al-Sumaidaie. "He is a very important regional player in creating balance."
But in an early sign that any future succession will likely be messy, senior Sunni political leaders suggested they may present their own candidate for the presidency in a challenge to the Kurds.
"Some Sunni leaders will sprint to try to get this post," a Sunni leader in the Iraqiya block said. "But anyone with any sense knows in the end they won't get it."
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Iraqi president stroke fuels succession talk