Iraqi Shiite & Sunni leaders denounce Senate vote on partitioning of Iraq--whose country is it?

Representatives of Iraq's major political parties on Sunday strongly denounced a U.S. Senate proposal calling for a limited centralized Iraqi government with the bulk of the power given to the country's ethnically divided regions.

The groups, which represented both Shiites and Sunnis, said the plan would hamper Iraq's future stability, and they suggested parliament draft a law permanently banning the splitting of Iraq along sectarian or ethnic lines.

"This proposal was based on the incorrrect reading and unrealistic estimations of Iraq's past, present and future," according to the statement read by Izzat al-Shahbandar, a representative of the Iraqi National List, a secular political party.

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It is important, however, to separate two very different issues that are often hopelessly confused: the illegal, destructive and unacceptable foreign invasion of Iraq that has brought the country to this damaged condition, and the capacity of the Iraqi people themselves to define themselves anew in a national configuration that is sustainable and satisfying because it is anchored in the free will of the people themselves. The atrocious imperial arrogance of the Anglo-American attack on Iraq should not detract from the hopeful possibility that an Iraq free of foreign domination might become a unique phenomenon in the modern Arab world: a country whose people defined themselves, free of foreign interference and domestic authoritarianism.

http://www.alternet.org/audits/64075