US: US authorities announced yesterday that some senior Iraqi officials purged after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would be restored to duties, in an overhaul of what had been a keystone policy of the occupation.
The review could allow some former members of Saddam's Baath Party to join an interim Iraqi government being put together by the United Nations, the White House spokesman, Mr Scott McClellan, said.
Around 400,000 people were thrown out of work last May when US administrator Mr Paul Bremer dissolved the armed forces, security services and defence and information ministries. An appeals system was set up to allow them to reclaim jobs.
But there has been widespread criticism that the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, most of whose members went into exile during the Saddam years, had gone too far in excluding skilled former senior Baath members.
"The appeals process sometimes has been slower in implementation than was originally designed," US spokesman Mr Dan Senor told a Baghdad news conference. Those who were Baath Party members in name only would be welcomed, spokesmen said, but those tainted by their role in Saddam's regime before it was toppled a year ago would remain excluded.
Meanwhile, witnesses said Falluja front lines were calm yesterday, though clashes erupted in the nearby town of Karma. A local official said police were collecting heavy weapons from fighters in Falluja under a peace deal announced on Sunday.
But Lieut-Gen James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in western Iraq, said the response to the deal with Falluja civic leaders had been disappointing.
He questioned the ability of civic leaders in Falluja to persuade the insurgents to disarm and warned guerrillas in the battered city they had "days, not weeks" to disarm or risk a renewed US offensive.
Kidnappers freed two Swiss nationals and a Palestinian yesterday, but several other foreign hostages remained missing.
A gunman killed a South African security guard in a Baghdad supermarket. His Iraqi translator was also injured.
"A gunman came in and shot them both," Mr Aslan Khalil, a supermarket employee, said. "When the gunman came in, he told us: 'This is a Jew, how do you deal with him and sell to him?' "
At least 26 foreign civilians and private security guards have been killed in violence in March and April, including an Italian killed by kidnappers.
In Basra, families mourned their dead after suicide bombers killed 73 people, 20 of them children, most burned alive in a bus on their way to school. The death toll rose to 73 after five of the 99 wounded died overnight, hospital officials said. The blasts at three police stations in Basra, and at the police academy in nearby Zubeir, a mainly Sunni town, were the bloodiest attacks in the British-controlled zone since the start of the US-led occupation a year ago. - (Reuters)