US Senate votes to support dividing Iraq on sectarian basis

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US Senate votes to support dividing Iraq on sectarian basis

26/09/2007 23h19

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Senate approved Wednesday a Bosnia-style plan to divide Iraq on ethnic and religious lines, touted by backers as the sole hope of forging a federal state out of sectarian strife.

In a vote of 75 to 23, the Senate passed the non-binding resolution touted by backers as the best hope to produce a political solution to murderous sectarian strife in Iraq.

The measure would not force a change in President George W. Bush's war strategy, but provides a key test of an idea drawing rising interest in Washington despite opposition from the Bush administration.

The plan, offered as an amendment to a defense policy bill, would provide for decentralizing Iraq in a federal system as permitted by Iraq's constitution to stop the country from becoming a failed state.

It proposes to separate Iraq into Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni entities, with a federal government in Baghdad in charge of border security and oil revenues.

It also aims to defuse sectarian violence by offering Sunnis a share of oil revenues, boosting reconstruction aid and debt relief and launching an international diplomatic effort to rally the world's great powers and Iraq's neighbors to the new federation's cause.

Advocates say the plan, championed by Democratic senator and presidential hopeful Joseph Biden, offers a route to a political solution in Iraq that could allow US troops to eventually go home without leaving chaos behind.

The measure won support from some prominent Republicans, providing a rare moment of bipartisanship in the intensely polarized debate over the Iraq war.

The leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Harry Reid, said on Wednesday the vote "reflects the important recognition by the US Senate that political reconciliation must remain Iraqis' primary goal."

"Implementing the political solution envisioned in this legislation will help redeploy American troops from the Iraqi civil war, more effectively fight terrorism and make America more secure," Reid said.

While Republican lawmakers have mostly backed Bush's "surge" of additional troops in Iraq, many remain frustrated by the political stalemate among the country's rival factions.

"We have a flawed political design that we are pushing currently in Baghdad," Republican presidential candidate Senator Sam Brownback, one of 11 co-sponsors of the bill, said before Wednesday's vote.

Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison looked for inspiration to the Dayton Peace Accords in former Yugoslavia which led to the creation of a semi-autonomous Muslim-Croat federation and a Bosnian Serb Republic.

"I think what we have seen in Bosnia is a lessening of tensions when there is a capability for the security forces, the educational and the religious sects to have their own ability to govern within themselves," she said.

Critics, who have included the White House, have argued Biden's plan is a recipe for more chaos in Iraq.

US ally Turkey would oppose such an initiative, fearful of unrest among its Kurdish population, they say, adding that a partitioned Iraq would lead outside powers like Iran and Saudi Arabia to bolster rival ethnic militia.

Other critics say frontier drawing in the Middle East by western powers has caused enough historical heartache, and it should be up to Iraqis to shape their future.

Some also say that partitioning Iraq, even if Baghdad remains whole, could encourage ethnic cleansing.

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which delivered recommendations in December warned that dividing Iraq could trigger mass population flows, the collapse of the fragile Iraqi security forces and ethnic cleansing by strengthened militias.