Up to 30,000 top members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party will be banned from any future Iraqi government, a senior US official said Friday as part of a sweeping decree aimed at putting "a stake in the heart" of the long-entrenched organization.
The US military announced Friday the arrest of Adilabdillah Mahdi al-Duri al-Tikriti, an upper-level Baath Party official who was also No. 52 on the US "blacklist" of regime figures.
Al-Duri was the Baath regional command chairman for a district near Tikrit and was apprehended in the village of ad-Dawr on Thursday. Tikrit is Saddam's hometown and a hotbed of Baath Party supporters.
The order banning the Baathists will not be easy to carry out. The talent pool of the Iraqi civil service is brimming with bureaucrats whose livelihoods depended on Baath Party affiliation.
In the Shiite holy city of Karbala, volunteers excavated a mass grave and collected the remains of 45 bodies. Residents suspect as many as 5,000 sets of remains are buried in the area, though they offered no immediate proof. The mass grave is the third uncovered in Iraq this week.
"The blood of innocent people won't go away. Criminals should stand trial," chanted some of the 1,000 people gathered at the mass grave site in Karbala. "Death to the Baath Party members."
US civilian administrator Paul Bremer released the decree Friday barring Baathists from the party's top four echelons from any public position -- whether in universities, hospitals or minor government posts.
An even stricter vetting process will be used in appointing officials to Iraqi ministries dealing with security, such as the defense and interior ministries. In addition, all members of a future Iraqi government will be required to renounce Baathism, said an official from the US Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.
"The Baath Party in Iraq is finished," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity at a background briefing inside the marble confines of Saddam's Republican Palace. "We mean to be sure that by this process, we will put a stake in its heart."
The reconstruction team's purging efforts will target 15,000 to 30,000 party members, the official said.
As many as 1.5 million of Iraq's 24 million people belonged to the party under Saddam. But only about 25,000 to 50,000 were full-fledged members -- the elite targeted by US officials.
Many of the upper-level figures in Saddam's regime -- the most-wanted, including the Iraqi leader himself -- are already being pursued, depicted on a deck of cards designed to familiarize US forces with their faces.
The official said Americans would comb through the deposed regime's records, interview co-workers and seek testimony to make sure the government is free of the party's influence.
The pervasive public signs and displays of Saddam's face have also been banned, the official said, speaking under a roof topped by four 6m-tall statues of Saddam's head.
The order does not specifically ban gatherings of former Baathists.
The Baath Party was founded in neighboring Syria in 1943 and spread across the Arab world, promoting Arab unity with a repressive, Soviet-style party structure.
Iraq's Baath Party, dominated by Sunni Muslims in a country that has a Shiite majority, took power briefly in the early 1960s, then ruled Iraq continuously from 1968 until last month -- most of that time under Saddam. Neighboring Syria is ruled by a Baath faction headed by President Bashar Assad.
As Iraq's version of it is shoved into history, some of its people prescribe caution to those who would purge its ranks indiscriminately.
"The Baath Party itself isn't bad -- the ideology isn't bad -- but the administration of the party was bad," said Shukur Mahmoud, 42, a shopkeeper. "There are still good people in the Baath Party."
But Abbas Abu Mustafa, walking down a Baghdad street Friday afternoon, disagreed.
"The Baath Party is of no use to Iraq now or in the future," he said. "There are many good people in Iraq that can lead this country."
The Iraqi National Congress said it believes it has located a mass grave of 600 Kuwaiti prisoners missing since the first Persian Gulf War 12 years ago. An INC statement, e-mailed to the Associated Press, said the grave was discovered at an air base in the town of Habaniyah, located northwest of Baghdad.
It said INC officials were on the scene Friday and conducted initial tests at the site. The remains of some 40 people were recovered, it said.
The Kuwaitis were taken prisoner during Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in 1990. A UN Security Council resolution approved after Iraq's eviction from Kuwait demanded the return of the Kuwaitis.
In a related development, the US military announced that a team of American nuclear specialists will conduct a damage assessment at Iraq's largest nuclear facility, the dormant Tuwaitha plant, weeks after it was repeatedly plundered by looters.
Reconstruction will top the agenda when US Treasury Secretary John Snow meets in Deauville, France, this weekend with his counterparts from the world's seven richest industrial countries and Russia.
Iraq's US administrators and Treasury officials also made headway in recovering some of Iraq's missing money.
Lebanon's Central Bank announced Friday that it froze millions of dollars in Iraqi assets but will return them only after a "legitimate" government is formed in Baghdad.
It did not disclose the amount, but US officials said US$495 million were found in secret Lebanese bank accounts.
Some parts of life in Baghdad were getting back to normal Friday.
A near-capacity crowd turned out on Friday to see Iraqi champion Police trounce al-Zawra 2-1 in the first soccer match since the downfall of Saddam, and to cheer on Rad Hamoudi -- Iraq's greatest star, fresh from years in exile.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
RSS