Source:
Channel NewsAsiaBAGHDAD : 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.
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Moqtada al-Sadr, a radical 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.
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Not only do the Iraqis resist George W. Bush's greed-driven oil production sharing agreements, but now they must resist outsiders' efforts to carve up their country.
No outside country or entity has any right to take control of Iraq, its resources or its governance.