BAGHDAD — Iraq's political leadership, in a rare show of unity, skewered a nonbinding U.S. Senate resolution passed last week that endorses the decentralization of Iraq through the establishment of semiautonomous regions.
The measure, which calls for a relatively weak central government and strong regional authorities in Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurdish areas, has touched a nerve here, raising fears that the United States is planning to partition Iraq.
"The Congress adopted this proposal based on an incorrect reading and unrealistic estimations of the history, present and future of Iraq," said Izzat Shahbandar, a member of former interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's secular parliamentary bloc.
He was reading from a statement also signed by preeminent Shiite Muslim religious parties and the main Sunni Arab bloc.
"It represents a dangerous precedent to establishing the nature of the relationship between Iraq and the U.S.A.," the statement said, "and shows the Congress as if it were planning for a long-term occupation by their country's troops."
The nonbinding measure was approved in Washington on Wednesday, and resentment appears to be building daily in Iraq. Passed by senators, 75 to 23, it supports a "federal system" that would create regions dominated by sect and ethnicity.
The measure was sponsored by Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, a Democratic candidate for president. Biden, along with Council of Foreign Relations president emeritus Leslie Gelb, has advocated that the country be divided up along ethnic, sectarian and regional lines.
Northern Iraq already has a semiautonomous region ruled by Kurds, but its leaders want to annex adjacent areas with dominant Kurdish populations.
The federalization idea, backed by some Democrats, is one of many proposals floated in the U.S., where the public has become disillusioned with the continuing violence in Iraq.
But the Senate resolution, whatever its intended effect, has backfired in Baghdad, where it has been interpreted in light of Iraq's history of foreign occupation, from the Ottoman Empire to Britain and now the United States. Iraqi political parties that have been deadlocked for months on issues such as a national oil law have rallied to defend the country's sovereignty and to repulse any effort by another country to shape Iraq's fate.
