Saturday, April 21, 2007
Sadrist to fight law to reinstate senior Baathists
Politics
(AP) - The head of the parliament's de-Baathification committee said Friday he will fight a U.S.-backed draft law that would allow former senior members in ousted leader Saddam Hussein's ruling party to resume government positions. Falah Hassan Shanshal, a follower of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, made his comments hours after U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Iraqis to pass legislation on political reconciliation that includes amending a so-called de-Baathification law.
The proposal, one of several benchmarks set for the Iraqi government by the U.S. administration, is designed to appease Iraq's once-dominant Sunni Arab minority in a bid to blunt the country's insurgency and return members of the minority to the political process. The law would allow those in the feared security and paramilitary forces to resume government positions but would exclude former regime members already charged with or sought for crimes.
The reconciliation program includes parliament's approval of a draft law that would allow senior former members of Saddam's Baath party to resume government positions. The draft law was introduced last month by President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, but it still has to be approved by Cabinet and before it is sent to Parliament."The reconciliation draft law includes many legal and constitutional violations. We can even say that it is a coup that will bring members of the fascist, Saddamist Baath to power without any justification," Shanshal said in an interview with the U.S.-funded Radio Sawa. "Everyone has agreed to stand against it, not only the Sadrist bloc."
When contacted by The Associated Press, one of his colleagues in the al-Sadr bloc said the legislator went on a trip abroad earlier in the day. It is not clear yet when the draft will be sent to parliament, but if approved, the draft law would allow thousands of senior former Baath Party members to regain their jobs or grant them pensions if they are denied jobs they once held in the government or military. Al-Sadr has 30 lawmakers in the 275-member parliament, so Shanshal's comments could signal a serious stumbling bloc to the legislation.
About 1.5 million of Iraq's 27 million people belonged to the Baath party. Most say they joined for professional, not ideological, reasons, because career advancement, university enrollment and specialized medical care depended on party membership during Saddam's rule.
Labels: de-baathification, Falah Hassan Shanshal, Moqtada Al-Sadr
