Friday, September 28, 2007

Iraqi Government Rejects Senate Plan To Carve Up Iraq

Just in case anyone was wondering what "the sovereign Iraqi government" was thinking...

Baghdad rejects US Senate [plan] to carve up Iraq
BAGHDAD, Sept 28 (AFP) - The Iraqi government on Friday firmly rejected a Bosnia-style plan approved by the US Senate to divide Iraq on ethnic and religious lines, saying Iraqis will themselves decide their future.

“The government and its prime minister (Nuri al-Maliki) reject this vote,” said government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh.

“It is the Iraqis who decide these sorts of issues, no one else,” Dabbagh said on state-run Al-Iraqiya television. “The Iraqi parliament too should express its total rejection of this plan.”

The plan, touted by backers as the sole hope of forging a federal state out of sectarian strife, was approved by the US Senate on Wednesday in a vote of 75 to 23.

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.