Ban eased on Saddam-era officials

BBC

The Iraqi parliament has passed legislation allowing former officials from Saddam Hussein's Baath party to return to public life.

The US had been urging Iraq's Shia-led government to approve the move in a bid to reach out to minority Sunni Arabs.

It will allow thousands of former party members to apply for reinstatement in the civil service and military.

The new law was passed as US President George W Bush, who is in the Gulf, said hope was returning to Iraq.

Saddam Hussein was executed on 30 December 2006 after a special tribunal found him guilty of crimes against humanity. His regime was predominantly Sunni and many figures were removed from government after his fall in 2003, under an edict from ex-US administrator Paul Bremer.

The army was disbanded, thousands of teachers, university lecturers and civil servants were sacked and anyone who had been a member of the higher tiers of the party was banned from government employment.

Some were reinstated after the US found that it had cleared out key ministries and the military without having any replacements.

After the Americans handed over power to an Iraqi government in 2004, they urged the Shia-led administration to ease the measures further in an effort to promote national reconciliation.

Much of the Sunni insurgency is thought to be centred on dismissed military men from the Baathist regime.

The new legislation - called the Accountability and Justice Law - was approved on Saturday by all 143 lawmakers present in the 275-member house.

It creates a three-month period for the ex-members to be challenged, after which they will be immune from prosecution over the Saddam era. ......