Baath Party Sent To Showers
Between 15,000 and 30,000 Baath Party officials will be banned entirely from any future Iraqi government, a senior U.S. official said Friday. He said the move will eliminate Saddam Hussein's party and "put a stake in its heart."
The official from the U.S. Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the move would help Iraq move on from the legacy of Saddam's regime.
"The Baath Party in Iraq is finished," the official said. "We mean to be sure that by this process, we will put a stake in its heart."
In other developments:
The United States handed the nine-page draft to council experts at the start of a meeting Thursday. The experts agreed to meet again on Friday.
"There are some things that are positive," said Fayssal Mekdad, the deputy U.N. ambassador of Syria, also a Security Council member. "But the most sensitive issues are still here."
The U.S. also faces resistance over its plan for ending sanctions. Some countries, like France, merely want the sanctions lifted until inspectors can verify that Iraq is free of weapons on mass destruction.
The U.S. justified war on the grounds that Iraq had large stockpiles of illegal arms. Aside from two possible mobile bioweapons labs, no banned weapons have been reported found.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder agreed Friday that sanctions against Iraq "make no sense." Secretary of State Colin Powell, at a joint news conference after a half-hour meeting at Schroeder's office, said: "I was pleased with the chancellor's commitment to lift the sanctions entirely."
They took no questions, however, and both described their talks as candid, implying some disagreements. So it was not immediately clear whether Germany no longer supported only a suspension of the sanctions.
Powell, meanwhile, raised the possibility Thursday of suspending the sanctions, but quickly backtracked and said the United States wants them lifted immediately and without conditions.
The U.S.-British-Spanish resolution would also end U.N. control over the country's vast oil wealth and allow the United States to use the money for the country's reconstruction.
The man picked to run Iraq's oil fields, former Shell CEO Philip J. Carroll, admitted to the Los Angeles Times that he may face conflicts because of his ties to the industry, but said he would try to avoid them.
Reconstruction officials in Iraq are trying to get the country's ministries and civil service working again, and are struggling to make sure they purge Saddam sympathizers without gutting the entire bureaucracy.
As many as 1.5 million of Iraq's 24 million people belonged to the Baath party under Saddam. But only about 25,000 to 50,000 were full-fledged members — the sort of elite targeted by U.S. officials. Many civil servants could obtain jobs only after making affiliations with the Baath Party.
The official said exceptions would be made in the winnowing process and also said that all but 2,000 of the thousands in question had melted away and were not angling for roles in the new government.
The reconstruction team's purging efforts, which the official said would begin Saturday, come nearly a week after U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks, the war's commander, told Iraqis that the Baath Party was dissolved.
The ORHA official said Iraq's American overseers would comb through the deposed regime's records, interview suspected Baathists' co-workers and seek testimony to make sure that the government is free of the party's influence.
The official acknowledged the problems such an approach would entail but said they were worth it.
"The de-Baathification will entail some inefficiencies in the running of the government," the official said. "That's the price we're willing to pay in order to extirpate Baathism from Iraqi society."
Any public displays supporting Saddam have also been banned by the U.S. occupying force, the official said, adding that rewards would be offered for the whereabouts of senior party officials.