Iraq to reinstate Saddam party followers
Iraq's parliament passed a benchmark law Saturday allowing lower-ranking former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to reclaim government jobs, the first major piece of U.S.-backed legislation it has adopted.
Traveling in Manama, Bahrain, President Bush hailed the law as "an important step toward reconciliation."
"It's an important sign that the leaders of that country understand that they must work together to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people," he said.
The seismic piece of legislation had been demanded by the United States since November 2006 and represented the first legislative payoff for Bush's decision to deploy 30,000 additional troops to the country to quell violence.
In announcing the troop buildup more than a year ago, Bush said it would provide the Iraqi government "breathing space" to begin tackling legislation designed to reconcile Iraq's Shiite and Sunni Arabs as well as Kurds.
Other benchmarks languish, though, including legislation to divvy up the country's vast oil wealth, constitutional amendments demanded by the Sunni Arabs and a bill spelling out rules for local elections.
It was not immediately clear how many former Baathists would benefit from the new legislation, titled the Accountability and Justice law. But the move was seen as a key step in the reconciliation process.
Before the party was outlawed — the first official act of L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority — its membership was estimated at between 2 million and 6 million.
The strict implementation of so-called de-Baathification rules meant that many senior bureaucrats who knew how to run ministries, university departments and state companies were fired after 35 years of Baath party rule.
Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority order No. 1 of May 16, 2003, had effectively stripped key government ministries, the military and top economic institutions of centuries of cumulative experience.
The order also was blamed for fueling the Sunni-dominated insurgency that took root in the late summer of 2003, under the leadership of ousted Sunni Baathists who sought vengeance against what they saw as their American tormentors.
