IRAQ: Iraq's new president said in comments published yesterday that the interim government could bring back former members of Saddam's defunct Ba'ath Party as long as they have no blood on their hands.
In an interview with respected Iraqi newspaper al-Mada, President Ghazi Yawar (46) said Iraq needed the expertise of some former regime members to help rebuild the country and bring together different social, ethnic and religious groups.
Mr Paul Bremer, the US administrator of Iraq, last year banned all but the most junior Ba'ath Party members from having any role in post-war Iraq after he initiated a policy of "de-Ba'athification" to rid the country of its vestiges.
"Reconciliation . . . does not mean depriving our country of the qualifications and expertise of those who did not commit crimes," President Yawar, a Saudi educated engineer and a powerful tribal leader, told the newspaper.
He said many former members of the Ba'ath Party should be redrafted into public service, but that those who had committed crimes against the Iraqi people or held positions of influence under the former regime should be put on trial.
President Yawar will now be the figurehead of the interim government that will lead Iraq out of US-led occupation on June 30th, and into elections in January 2005.
Following criticism from members of the now-dissolved Iraqi Governing Council, Mr Bremer said in April that authorities would review some measures taken under de-Ba'athification.
Under Saddam many Iraqis were forced to join the Ba'ath Party if they wanted to get jobs and other benefits.
Promotion to some jobs immediately meant membership of the party which ruled Iraq from 1968 until Saddam was toppled last year.