The US Senate is planning to vote on a proposal backed by Democratic Senator Joseph Biden to divide war-torn Iraq based on ethnic lines.

Advocates of the plan, which is to be voted as soon as Tuesday, claim that the plan would allow US troops to eventually go home without leaving chaos behind.

The Plan, which calls for an autonomous federation of Kurdish, Shia and Sunni regions has come under fire by critics, who say Iraq's ethnic groups who live side-by-side in cities and inter-marry are not divided by lines on a map.

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which delivered recommendations in December, warned division could trigger mass population flows, the collapse of the Iraqi security forces and ethnic cleansing by strengthened militias.

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