Violence continued unabated Tuesday, with two people killed and 11 wounded in a car bomb attack in Baghdad, a day after 62 people died in a series of attacks across the country.
A policeman was also killed in the restive city of Baquba northeast of Baghdad.
Shiite MP Jalaluddin Al Saghir said that political leaders met Monday and reached an agreement "to start the first reading of the Shiite draft law to form regions."
Parliament is likely to debate the draft Tuesday or Wednesday.
The draft focuses on mechanisms of how to form the autonomous regions, although Saghir said that there was an agreement "not to start forming the regions before the committee on constitutional review ends its work."
Sunni lawmakers have called for the constitution to be amended before Shiite plans for a southern autonomous region are implemented.
Iraq's newly empowered Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) has been pushing to form autonomous regions in the country's largely Shiite south along the lines of the Kurdish autonomy in the north.
But the country's former elite Sunni Arabs have staunchly opposed the law, fearing that it would divide the country and rob them of the vast oil reserves concentrated in the north and the south of Iraq.
The draft law is backed by the powerful Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq although it has also seen strong opposition from within the UIA.
And last week Shiite leaders had backed down, saying that they might not immediately implement the law even if it was adopted in principle in parliament.
"We all agree on the principle of federalism, but some of the factions of the UIA want to delay its implementation because the atmosphere is not right," UIA spokesman Sabah Saedi said.
"The question is not of just adopting and implementing the law, but of making it a success."
The plans to divide the country come as UN secretary-general Annan warned that immediate steps were essential to bring Iraq back from the "brink of a civil war."
Speaking at the UN General Assembly, Annan joined appeals by Iraqi leaders for a quick and massive international effort to strengthen the embattled government in Baghdad and "bring Iraq back from the brink."
"If current patterns of alienation and violence persist much longer, there is a grave danger that the Iraqi state will break down, possibly in the midst of full-scale civil war," Annan said.
Annan's warning came as a wave of violence over the past week left hundreds of people killed in Baghdad - the epicenter of Shiite-Sunni sectarian violence.
Dozens of bodies of men, shot to death execution-style, are found dumped on the streets of Baghdad despite a massive security crackdown in the capital since mid-June.
Insurgent violence has also been unabated.
On Monday two suicide bombings - one in the northern city of Tall Afar and the other in the western restive city of Ramadi - left 34 people dead. At least 38 more were killed across the country in a series of attacks.
Even as violence in the country surged, US head of military forces in the Middle East stressed that he had adequate troops in Iraq.
General George Abizaid said that there were enough reserve forces.
"We don't see a need to commit them to the fight yet and until those forces are committed, we don't see a need to ask for more under the present circumstances," Abizaid said in an interview with US television network CNN.
The Pentagon said Monday that there are currently 147,000 US troops in Iraq, up from a low of about 127,000 troops in June. Pentagon officials have attributed the increase to an overlap of troops rotating in and out of the country.
© 2006 Agence France-Presse
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