Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki sharply criticised a bid for greater autonomy by Salaheddin province, claiming Saddam Hussein's Baath party wants to make it a "refuge," a statement from the premier's office said on Sunday.

It is the prime minister's first response to a Thursday vote by the provincial council of Sunni Arab majority Salaheddin in central Iraq for it to become an administratively and economically autonomous region similar to Kurdistan.

"The Baath party wants Salaheddin province to be a secure refuge for Baathists, but this will not happen," a statement from Maliki's office quoted him as saying in an interview with Al-Iraqiya television, which is to be broadcast later.

"Federalism is a constitutional issue," Maliki said. The "Salaheddin provincial council does not have the right to announce this."

Instead, the province should have presented a request to the cabinet, which would then present it to parliament, after which the request would go through other procedures, he said.

However, Article 119 of the Iraqi constitution does not mention a requirement that requests be made to the cabinet, nor to parliament.

Instead, it states: "One or more governorates shall have the right to organise into a region based on a request to be voted on in a referendum submitted in one of the following two methods."

These are: "A request by one-third of the council members of each governorate intending to form a region," or "a request by one-tenth of the voters in each of the governorates intending to form a region."

Maliki also said that 615 people from various provinces, especially in central and southern Iraq, had been arrested in a campaign against alleged Baathists who were said to be targeting "state security and stability."

Ahmed Abdullah, the governor of Salaheddin, had said the main reason for the vote was the campaign of arrests carried out by Iraqi security forces in the province without consultation with local authorities.

Top US, Iraq security chiefs discuss ties
Washington (AFP) Oct 29, 2011 - The White House said the top US and Iraqi national security chiefs discussed the future of their countries' ties on Saturday, two months before all US troops are due to leave Iraq.

During their talks at the White House, US National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and his Iraqi counterpart Falah al-Fayadh "reaffirmed the common vision of a broad, deep strategic partnership between the United States and Iraq as embodied in the Strategic Framework Agreement," spokesman Jay Carney said.

"The two held a far-reaching discussion of the elements of a fully normalized relationship between Iraq and the United States, including education, investment and security."

The meeting came after Iraq's refusal to grant US troops legal immunity prompted President Barack Obama to abandon US plans to keep a residual training force in Iraq after December 31, and to announce all US troops would come home this year.

Carney said Donilon and Fayadh "committed to develop additional mechanisms to establish a continuous strategic dialogue between the United States and Iraq."

Obama announced last week that all US troops will leave Iraq by the end of the year, ending a long war which cleaved deep political divides and estranged the United States from its allies.

After nearly nine years, the deaths of more than 4,400 US troops, tens of thousands of Iraqis and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars, Obama said the last US soldier will leave with his head held high.