CAIRO: Iraq's Shi'ite vice president yesterday rejected a US Senate resolution pushing the Baghdad government to give more control to Iraq's ethnically divided regions. He insisted federalism was an internal Iraqi matter.
The Arab League also firmly rejected the US plan and lambasted Washington for destroying Iraq and turning it into the main base for Al Qaeda.
The Senate passed the measure a day earlier, calling on Iraq to limit central government control in a bid to resolve its violence and political crisis.
Democrat Senator Joseph Biden, one of the nine binding measure's primary sponsors, has called for Iraq to be divided into federal regions for the country's Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish communities in a power-sharing agreement similar to Bosnia in the 1990s.
On a visit to Cairo, Iraqi Vice-President Adil Abdul Mahdi said, "people have the right to say whatever they want, though these issues are related to Iraq."
"A thousand projects could be passed from outside, but the decision that is to be passed in Iraq is to be decided by Iraqis and nobody else," he said after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
He repeated those sentiments later in the day after meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Al Sharaa in Damascus, where he expressed admiration for the UAE's confederation, but said it was inapplicable to Iraq's situation.
Abdul Mahdi said that in his talks with Mubarak, he discussed the security and political situation in Iraq and the possibility of reopening the Egyptian diplomatic mission in Baghdad, in addition to enrolling Egypt in projects to rebuild Iraq.
In Damascus, Abdul Mahdi said the "often rocky relationship between Iraq and Syria was improving. Ties have been bolstered in all sectors."
Meanwhile, Turkey and Iraq will today sign a security agreement to combat Turkish Kurd rebels taking refuge in northern Iraq, an Iraqi official said after marathon talks.
"The agreement will be signed by the Turkish and Iraqi interior ministers" an Iraqi official said yesterday.
Blackwater USA triggered a major battle in the Iraq war by sending an unprepared team of security guards into an insurgent stronghold, which led to their horrific deaths and a violent response by US forces, according to a congressional investigation released yesterday.
In another development, a senior Iraqi official urged Damascus yesterday to improve the lot of Iraqi refugees whose arrival in Syria has raised tensions between the two countries.
"The refugees are the responsibility of the Iraqi government but they're also victims of regional and international circumstances everyone helped create," Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi said in Damascus.
Separately, the US military said yesterday it was investigating the deaths of five women and four children in a village south of Baghdad where American forces had conducted air and ground operations.
US forces were targeting Al Qaeda in Iraq-linked fighters in ground and air operations late Tuesday in the village of Babahani before the bodies were discovered.
