Fatima El-Issawi, Agence France Presse  --  Arab News

BAGHDAD, 11 June 2004 — More than 12,000 former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party will be reintegrated into public service one year after losing their jobs under a policy to punish those loyal to the ousted regime, a senior official said yesterday.

In a backtrack on its once hard-line stance, the national de-Baathification committee — a body created and headed by ex-Pentagon favorite Ahmad Chalabi — reinstated the public servants.

“Our committee, which fired 30,000 people, has decided to reintegrate 12,000 who have appealed the decision,” committee director Mithal Allussi said.

“They are from a range of sectors, for example the Interior Ministry, or education or electricity departments,” he explained. “Some decided to restart active work and others chose retirement.”

The Iraqi media yesterday released a list of people who have already returned to work.

In a statement, signed by Chalabi and released in Iraqi newspapers on the same day, the committee said it has “accepted the request for certain sections of the Baath party to be reintegrated into public office and in business and the state.”

They will be on a one-year probation, the document explained, adding that “certain people in the number released by the newspaper must appear before the de-Baathification committee and finish preparing the necessary paperwork before they can restart work.”

Some 694 names released by the media were all teachers from Baghdad and the Sunni region of Al-Anbar to the west, notably Ramadi and Fallujah, which saw heavy fighting in April.

The reinstated workers, however, were all low down in the Baath party and Allussi said no members of the party’s top three ranks would ever work in the civil service again.

The softer stance on former Baathists followed Chalabi’s fall from favor in a head-on collision with his former US allies last month.

US and Iraqi forces raided Chalabi’s offices amid a swirl of allegations that the political leader had handed US spy secrets to Iran.

Even before the run-in with Chalabi, US overseer Paul Bremer reversed the policy in late April, after deciding Chalabi’s de-Baathification committee had been too severe in handing out judgments.

Bremer said the coalition would rehabilitate government functionaries and military veterans.