(Middle East Online) Iran, Syria reject US Senate plan to split Iraq while Kurds welcome concept of federalism.
Shiite and Sunni figures in Iraq dismissed Saturday a US Senate plan to split Iraq along ethnic and religious lines, while the Kurds welcomed it as the "only viable solution" to the present chaos.
Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki said upon his return from the United States that the idea being floated there by a US senator and presidential hopeful would "be a catastrophe not only in Iraq but also on the region."
"It is Iraqis who decide and they are keen to maintain the unity of their country," Maliki told state-run Al- Iraqiya television.
Moqtada al- Sadr , a Shiite cleric who commands the largest single bloc in parliament and boasts a powerful militia known as the Mahdi Army, said the proposal demonstrated "flagrant interference in Iraq's internal affairs."
"We reject this decision chapter and verse and demand the Iraqi government reject it," he said in a statement issued by his office.
The leading Sunni authority in Iraq, the Ulema Council -- also known as the Committee of Muslim Scholars -- joined the Shiite condemnation, saying the idea "uses the pretext of avoiding violence to impose the division of Iraq."
This division is "one of the main objectives of American occupation," the council said, calling on Iraqis to reject it.
The only place where the splitting of Iraq was popular was in the Kurdish region in the north which already enjoys a large degree of autonomy.
"The people and government of the Kurdistan region welcome the adoption of the US Senate resolution calling for the rebuilding of the Iraqi state on the basis of federalism," a statement from the regional government said.
"A federal arrangement for the Iraqi state does not mean division, but rather voluntary union. It is the only viable solution to the problems of Iraq."
The plan, offered by Democratic presidential hopeful Joseph Biden as an amendment to a defence policy bill, was approved Wednesday at the US Senate in Washington by a vote of 75 to 23.