WASHINGTON (AFP) — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice rejected a bipartisan Senate-backed plan for a decentralized, federal Iraq as "a real mistake."
"You know, decentralization and federalism is in their (the Iraqis') constitution. But you can't partition; this isn't kind of ethnic enclaves," Rice said in an interview Monday with the New York Post.
"That would be a real mistake. And by the way, the first and most important reason that you can't do it is that Iraqis don't want to do that and reacted extremely badly to the idea of partitioning the country into ethnically governed enclaves."
Critics of the plan say that if put into practice, it would likely see Iraq's factions separate on ethnic Kurd, Sunni and Shiite lines.
But backers of the plan reject Rice's argument that it amounts to partition, saying it has the opposite intent, of keeping Iraq together as a single state with empowered regions and a federal government in Baghdad.
"The amendment does not attempt to 'partition' Iraq or divide it along ethnic or sectarian lines," its main sponsor, Democratic Senator Joseph Biden, said in a letter to Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki released Tuesday.
"To the contrary, it calls for keeping Iraq together by bringing to life the federal system enshrined in its constitution. A federal Iraq is a united Iraq, but one in which extensive powers devolve to the regions."
Biden also wrote to US ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker and asked him why US officials were "dangerously mischaracterizing" the plan, passed as an amendment to a defense policy bill last week.
On Sunday, the US embassy in Baghdad had weighed into the row with a statement.
"Attempts to partition or divide Iraq by intimidation, force or other means into three separate states would produce extraordinary suffering and bloodshed," it said.
"Our goal in Iraq remains the same: a united, democratic, federal Iraq that can govern, defend and sustain itself."
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