Kurdistan Observer

White House Rejects Idea Of Splitting Iraq

WASHINGTON (Reuters) May 2, 2006 - Iraq should be divided into three largely autonomous regions with less central control to stop the country from tearing apart, a leading U.S. Democrat proposed on Monday, but the White House rebuffed the idea.

Sen. Joseph Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the Bush administration's effort to establish a strong central government in Baghdad had been a failure, doomed to ethnic rivalry that spawned widespread sectarian violence.

A solution would be to give more autonomy to three regions -- Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shi'ite Arab -- with a weaker central government in Baghdad, he wrote in an op-ed article in The New York Times.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the administration remained committed to a unified Iraq.

"A partition government with regional security forces and a weak central government, as you are referencing, is something that no Iraqi leader has proposed and that the Iraqi people have not supported," he said.

President George W. Bush is facing the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, partly due to the increasingly unpopular Iraq war. Democrats, although they do not have a unified position on how to go forward on Iraq, are hoping to capitalize on this in congressional elections in November.
Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, is the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Leslie H. Gelb is the president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. Gov website
Photo: AFP

Biden said it was increasingly clear that Bush lacked a victory strategy and hoped only to prevent defeat so he could pass the problem on to his successor. He also called for most U.S. troops to be pulled out by 2008, near the end of Bush's presidency. The article was written with Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The proposal came on the third anniversary of a Bush speech declaring an end to major combat operations in Iraq, six weeks after the U.S.-led invasion.

'MISSION ACCOMPLISHED'

Bush had stood on the USS Abraham Lincoln in a flight suit with a "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him. Critics of Bush's handling of the war have long assailed that moment, citing the persistent violence in Iraq, the lack of a timetable for troop withdrawal, and a rising U.S. military death toll that now stands at 2,400.

"The mission was not accomplished then and it is not accomplished now," Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, said.

"Looking back on it, the president's public relations stunt on the aircraft carrier is an embarrassing symbol of the administration's naive and inept approach to Iraq," he said.
Democrats are trying to "distract attention away from the real progress that is being made," McClellan said.

"It's unfortunate those Democrats refuse to recognize that a new unity government has just recently been formed, which really lays the foundation for more progress moving forward."

Bush sent Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Baghdad last week to show support for the newly named prime minister after months of political deadlock.

"We believe this is a turning point for the Iraqi citizens and it's a new chapter in our partnership," Bush said after being briefed by Rice and Rumsfeld on Monday.

"This new government is going to represent a new start for the Iraqi people. It's a government that understands they've got serious challenges ahead of them."

The White House also defended war planning against critics, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said this weekend he had made the case that more troops should be sent in to deal with the aftermath of the invasion.

"There was a lot of advice given, and he (Bush) welcomed that advice," McClellan said. "He went around the table to make sure that the commanders had everything they needed and they agreed with the plan that General (Tommy) Franks had put in place."