White House rejects talk of dividing Iraq

US President George Bush rejects suggestions that Iraq be partitioned as a way of heading off worsening violence there.

US President George W Bush rejects suggestions that Iraq be partitioned as a way of heading off worsening violence there, White House spokesman Tony Snow has said.

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"He doesn't buy it," the spokesman said yesterday of an occasionally floated proposal to cut the war-torn country into separate states. "It's not practical."

"Most Iraqis don't want it," he said. "Iraqis look upon themselves not as -- at least in all cases -- as Sunni, Shia and Kurd, but as Iraqis, as descendants of a Mesopotamian civilisation that has been around for a very long time."