Iraqi President: Division of Iraq impossible

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (K24) - The President of Iraq, Fuad Masum, said the division of his country was impossible and unrealistic, according to the Iranian Mehr News magazine.

In a two-page interview published last week in the state-owned Mehr News Agency's magazine, the Iraqi President said Iraq could not be divided into many states, in response to a question regarding "the Americans', namely, Vice President Joe Biden's plans to divide Iraq."

In 2006, then Senator Biden proposed a plan to decentralise governance in Iraq. The “Biden Plan” envisaged an Iraq made up of three federal Kurdish, Sunni, and Shiite regions. The Presidential administration of George W. Bush, Jr. rejected the plan and opted instead to support a centralised Iraq.

The veteran Kurdish politician, founder and long-time member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), President Masum stated that the Iraqi Constitution adopted in a referendum in 2005, recognised the formation of federal regions by at least three provinces.

The magazine reported that the ethnic-Kurdish President Fuad Masum said that "the question of separation of Iraq is only a media buzz," since, according to him, no talks or international meetings on the issue have been organised so far. "I haven't heard of one single country putting this [division of Iraq] on their agenda," explained Masum.

Masum did not specifically refer to the Kurdistan Region, the Region's top officials' frequent remarks on secession from Iraq, which have increased especially in the aftermath of the emergence in 2014 of the militant Islamic State (IS) that holds large swathes of the Sunni Arab heartland of northern and western Iraq.

K24 contacted two officials Monday from the Iraqi Presidency's media office who said they were not aware of the interview.