Iraq bans school groups from Saddam's grave

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's government has ordered authorities in Saddam Hussein's home town to ban schoolchildren from visiting the grave of the former dictator after a video showed a group of school girls singing his praises.

Monday's order from the cabinet was accompanied by others that called for some signs and monuments dating back to before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to be dismantled because they "glorified the past regime."

"The (cabinet) ordered the Ministry of Education, Salahuddin province, and the provincial council (of Tikrit) to take the necessary steps to ban organized visits to the former president's grave and to avoid what happened in the visit to the grave by school girls in Tikrit," the government said.

An official at the government's National Media Center said the order applied to schools in Salahuddin, where Tikrit is. He said no one from anywhere else in the country was likely to contemplate organizing a school tour to the grave.

Saddam's grave is regularly viewed by small groups of admirers of the former strongman, who was toppled in the U.S. invasion and executed in December 2006 for the murder of 148 men and boys following a failed assassination attempt.

Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim-led government has little tolerance for admiration of Saddam, whose Sunni Arab-led government persecuted, and sometimes massacred, the Shi'ite majority.

Efforts to reconcile Iraq's fractious groups after the years of sectarian bloodshed unleashed by the U.S. invasion are not open to those members of his Baath party who are viewed as having blood on their hands.

(Reporting by Khalid al-Ansary; Editing by Michael Christie)