Top Shi'ite seeks total US pullout

This is from this site.
At the same time this chap seems to lean towards the division of Iraq outlined in the recent Senate resolution. It is unlikely a weak federation will be stable. The Sunnis in particular will be unhappy unless they get a good share of oil revenues at the very least. There is no way that the US will pull out completely. They want to be able to intervene in case US interests are threatened.

Top Shi’ite seeks total US pullout
Web posted at: 10/14/2007 2:21:14

Baghdad • A key Shi’ite member of Iraq’s ruling coalition called yesterday for the complete withdrawal of foreign troops from his country and rejected the possibility of permanent bases.

Ammar Hakim, a leading figure of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), told a gathering celebrating Eid Al Fitr: “We will work not to have fixed bases for foreign troops on Iraqi lands.”

Hakim is the son of SIIC leader Abdel Aziz Al Hakim and has played an increasingly prominent role in recent months as his father recovers from cancer. The SIIC is one of the largest parties in the Iraqi parliament and a key supporter of Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki’s government.

Hakim also came out strongly in favour of giving more control to Iraq’s religiously and ethnically divided regions, telling supporters that central government control was “tyrannical”. The call appeared to echo growing support among some in Washington to break Iraq into self-rule entities. Hakim also called on Iraqis to work for the creation of self-rule regions across the country, but cautioned that national unity must be maintained.

“Federalism is one way to accomplish this goal,” he told hundreds of supporters gathered at the party’s headquarters in Baghdad’s Jadriyah district. Hakim said Iraqis suffered from the concentration of decision-making and management of national wealth in Baghdad, arguing that such system had turned the central government into a “tyrannical and dominating” body. “I call on the sons of our nation to create their (self-rule) regions,” he said.

The idea of breaking up Iraq into self-rule entities has gained traction in Washington after two presidential hopefuls, Senator Joseph Biden and Senator Sam Brownback proposed giving more control to ethnically and religiously divided regions.

A nonbinding resolution to that effect won Senate approval last month, but Republicans supported it only after the measure was amended to make clear that President George W Bush should press for a new federalised system only if the Iraqis wanted it. Maliki and other Iraqi politicians denounced the decision as an infringement on Iraq’s sovereignty.

The question of federalism, however, is a sensitive one in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. Iraq’s minority Sunni Arabs, for example, fear that it would lead to Iraq’s breakup into a Shi’ite south and a Kurdish north, both with considerable oil wealth, while leaving them in a central region that’s mostly desert and with scarce natural resources.

Hakim also called for more dialogue between the United States and Iran and appealed for unity among Iraqis and a faster build up of national security forces to take over responsibility for security from US-led coalition forces in Iraq.