WASHINGTON: A top US senator proposed that Iraq be divided into three regions - Kurdish, Shia and Sunni - with a central government in Baghdad, but the White House quickly denounced the idea.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in an op-ed essay in Monday's edition of The New York Times that the idea "is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group ... room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests."

The plan draws on ideas used to ease the bloody conflict among Muslims, Serbs and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s.

The White House's speedy rejection of the idea suggested that the plan would face steep odds.

Also, the Free Internet Press reported US military officers and security experts are considering the possibility of dividing Iraq into three separate regions.