Baghdad  - Iyad al-Samarraie was elected on Sunday as the new speaker of Iraqi parliament after months of wrangling among the country's Sunni parties to fill the position.

Al-Samarraie, an outspoken opponent of Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki from the Iraqi Islamic Party, gained 154 votes out of the 232 deputies present on Sunday, a lawmaker told the Voices of Iraq (VOI) news agency.

The speaker's post has been vacant since December 23. Then-speaker Mashud Mashhadani quit after heated debate over a parliamentary resolution to demand the release of Montazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi tv journalist who had thrown his shoes at former US president George W Bush a week earlier.

Iraqi law gives Sunni lawmakers the responsibility of nominating the speaker of the parliament. But Sunni parties continued to fail over the past several months to agree on a nominee despite increasing pressure from the rest of the Iraqi government to end the dispute.

Despite reported opposition from al-Maliki, al-Samarrie remained the front-runner for the speaker position. (dpa)