Iraqi plan to rehire Saddam supporters draws fire

By Ross Colvin

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A draft law to allow thousands of former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to return to public life would fuel sectarian violence in Iraq, a panel enforcing the ban on Baathists said on Tuesday.

The De-Baathification Commission, which was set up under U.S. military rule in 2003 to purge party officials, said it had not been consulted on the law agreed by Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani, a Sunni Kurd.

"This allows the return of the Baath and its members to power ... This will not lead to reconciliation ... It will push Baath victims to seek revenge. It will fuel violence which will never be extinguished," the committee said in a statement.

"This draft law was created in a hurry before wounds were healed."

Washington has pushed Maliki's government to reach out to disaffected minority Sunnis, who form the backbone of a 4-year-old insurgency, by amending the law on de-Baathification under which tens of thousands of Baath party members, many of them Sunnis, were fired from government and military jobs.

Many had complained of a witch-hunt by the De-Baathification Commission, an independent body linked to parliament, and said their membership was out of necessity not political conviction.

Under the draft law agreed by Talabani and Maliki only senior members of the now outlawed Baath party will be banned from public life. The rest will be entitled to reappointment.

It also suggests giving Baath members immunity from legal action, after a three-month window for lawsuits to be filed.

The commission, which has proposed reducing the number of Baathists excluded from office from 30,000 to 1,500, said the draft law "opens the doors for (Saddam's) security and intelligence officers to return to their posts".

"It will allow the leaders of the Baath to take the jobs of the prime minister and president and judicial authority. We are sure the majority in the parliament will not approve it," commission executive director Ali Faisal al-Lami told Reuters.

It was not clear under which sections of the draft law, of which Reuters has a copy, such appointments could happen. His comments echo the sentiments of many Shi'ites, who fear minority Sunnis could once again become politically dominant.

U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has pushed the government to deal with the de-Baathification issue, a major grievance of Sunnis who feel marginalised in Iraq's new political landscape.

U.S. commanders in Iraq have said the sectarian fighting that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis cannot be ended by military force, only by political compromise that fosters national reconciliation between the warring sects.

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed in Baghdad)