The speaker of the Iraqi parliament said Tuesday that a controversial plan to partition the country into three autonomous regions is politically dead. Mahmoud al-Mashhadani said in an interview that legislation to implement a concept known as federalism, which threatened to collapse the country's fragile multi-sect government, would likely be postponed indefinitely after a meeting of political leaders on Wednesday.The federalism plan would create a Shiite region in southern Iraq much like the autonomous zone in the north controlled by the Kurds. Sunnis have generally opposed the plan, on grounds that it would leave them only with vast swaths of desert in the country's middle, devoid of the oil reserves in the other regions. The constitution that Iraq adopted last fall allows for a form of federalism. Sunni parties supported the charter only reluctantly and joined the current government on condition of a resumption of federalism discussions, in which they hoped to kill the concept.
"If federalism is to be applied now, it will lead to the secession of the south and the establishment of an Islamist extremist state in the center of the country," said Mashhadani, an outspoken Sunni Arab who is the third-ranking official in the government. "It is not possible to venture or to start the application of federalism now. Look, Iraqi blood is more important than federalism." When asked to predict the likely outcome of Wednesday's meeting of political leaders, he said: "We could agree on the principle and then postpone the topic for four years."