Biden Tapped to Oversee Political Reconciliation in Iraq

Vice President Joe Biden, who as a senator advocated a plan to partition Iraq, has been tapped to oversee political reconciliation among Iraqi factions, the White House announced Tuesday.

As the U.S. military met its deadline to withdraw from Iraqi cities, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said President Obama asked his No. 2 to work with Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Christopher Hill on mending fences in Iraq.

Biden would be "working with the Iraqis toward overcoming their political differences and achieving the type of reconciliation that we all understand has yet to fully take place, but needs to take place," Gibbs said.

Gibbs said Biden has "always been an active participant" in Iraqi reconstruction efforts.

"I think, given his knowledge of the region, the number of times he's been there, he's perfectly suited for this type of role," Gibbs said, adding that Biden could travel to Iraq as part of the job.

Such a responsibility would be the highest-level overseas duty assigned to Biden, who has trended toward more domestic matters despite his foreign policy credentials, touted during the campaign.

But his call for a partition of Iraq angered Iraqi leaders a few years ago.

At the time, Biden wanted Iraq divided into three semi-autonomous regions -- for the Kurds, the Sunnis and the Shiites. The regions would have been linked by a central government in Baghdad.

In a May 2006 New York Times column, he and former Council on Foreign Relations president Leslie Gelb argued that Iraq could follow the Bosnia model by being divided into "ethnic federations." They wrote that the Bush administration, at the time, was pursuing a "futile effort" to strengthen the central government in Baghdad.

Four years later, Gibbs said the idea of a partition is not a live debate within the Obama administration.

He said that Biden, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, would work with those three ethnic groups in the months ahead, but that he would not necessarily be a "mediator."

Christopher Preble, foreign policy director at the Cato Institute, said Biden's past stance on partitioning Iraq isn't a clear asset or liability for him in helping strike political reconciliation among Iraqi leaders. While some might resent Biden for the plan, he said his backing of the proposal might endear him to Kurdish leaders -- who Preble said could still be angling for a state.

"I'm not convinced, frankly, that the partition argument is over," he said.

But Preble said Biden is a "logical" choice for the new role, particularly since it builds off his foreign policy credentials and experience with Iraqi issues.

"It doesn't shock me that they wanted some foreign policy issues in his portfolio," Preble said.