New Iraq president wants some Baathists back-paper

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/NUE333085.htm

BAGHDAD, June 3 (Reuters) - Iraq's new president said in comments published on Thursday that the interim government could bring back former members of Saddam Hussein's defunct Baath Party as long as they have no blood on their hands.

In an interview with respected Iraqi newspaper al-Mada, President Ghazi Yawar said Iraq needed the expertise of some former regime members to help rebuild the country and bring together different social, ethnic and religious groups.

Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, last year banned all but the most junior Baath Party members from having any role in post-war Iraq after he initiated a policy of "de-Baathification" 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," Yawar, a 46-year-old Saudi educated engineer and powerful tribal leader, told the newspaper.

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[maddezmom]

1. Bremer already flip-flopped on the de-Baathification, starting in Fallujah

`snip~

• Radical "de-Baathification," the pet project of the Pentagon and Ahmed Chalabi, has been overturned. The army that was disbanded is being slowly recreated.

~snip~

Over the past few weeks we have seen a number of despondent editorial commentaries by the most fervent supporters of the war. Having cheered this error-ridden occupation for 13 months they have now turned on it. They despair that Ahmed Chalabi will not be handed the keys to the country, that we are not crushing the insurgency with massive force, that we are sharing power with the United Nations, that Brahimi has been given so much power.{b] This is a good omen. It means the grownups have taken control. It might not solve the many problems in Iraq. But it does mark the return of sanity to America's Iraq policy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8537-2004Jun2.html