The White House on 1 May 2006 pushed back against a proposal to divide Iraq into three ethnically defined autonomous zones, insisting that US policy supports a federal, democratic, and unified Iraqi state.
Spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that no Iraqi leader had put forward such a partition plan and that the Iraqi public had shown no appetite for it. He noted that the United Nations Security Council had already established the framework of a unified Iraq.
McClellan added that Iraq's existing constitution already allows for flexible arrangements between the central government and regional authorities, and that a unity government could work through those questions over the coming months.
The proposal the White House was addressing appeared in that day's New York Times, co-written by Senator Joseph Biden and foreign policy scholar Leslie Gelb. The two argued for keeping Iraq together by granting its Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shiite Arab communities broad self-governance while preserving a central government for shared national interests.
Biden serves as the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Gelb is the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in May 2006, in its own words.