Members of Nepals parliament have overwhelmingly elected the Maoist leader Prachanda as the poor Himalayan countrys new prime minister, officials say according to BBC online Friday.
He defeated the candidate of the Congress party, Sher Bahadur Deuba.
Maoists won a surprise victory in April elections, and two other key parties supported Prachanda in the vote. Nepals first president, Ram Baran Yadav, was sworn in last month to the largely ceremonial role, after the monarchy was abolished in May.
It is only two years since Prachanda emerged from more than two decades underground as a militant communist leader. What the Maoists called their “peoples war” had left 13,000 people dead, tens of thousands displaced and much of the countrys infrastructure destroyed.
Now the former guerrilla will be the most powerful politician in the country, with 464 lawmakers giving him their vote and only 113 rejecting him.
