BAGHDAD, May 23: The US civil administrator for Iraq on Friday ordered the dissolution of the Iraqi armed forces and several security bodies, sacking 400,000 staff who had formed the backbone of Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Paul Bremer also dissolved the defence and information ministries and military and security courts, an administration statement said.

“These actions are part of a robust campaign to show the Iraqi people that the Saddam regime is gone, and will never return,” the statement said.

It said a new Iraq army capable of defending the country would be formed instead.

“The Coalition Provisional Authority plans to create, in the near future, a new Iraqi corps. This is the first step in forming a national self-defence capability for a free Iraq,” the statement said.

“Under civilian control, that Corps will be professional, non-political, militarily effective and representative of all Iraqis,” it added.

The decision came after the United Nations Security Council granted the United States and Britain broad powers to run postwar Iraq and use its abundant oil resources to finance its reconstruction, when it voted to lift 13 years of international sanctions imposed on Iraq over its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The Iraqi army has in practice already been disbanded by the US-led war that toppled Saddam’s government last month. The US administration has also banned the ruling Baath Party and vowed to prevent the party’s top officials from holding public office.

The order disbands both the elite Republican Guards and the regular army, suspends conscription, turns property of the dissolved entities over to the U.S.-led administration and dismisses all employees of the dissolved entities.

Iraq’s armed forces and state-funded paramilitary groups numbered around 400,000 on the eve of the US-led invasion.

The once-feared intelligence service employed thousands more, including members of special organs used to quash domestic dissent.

The statement said eligible military personnel and other employees of the dissolved entities who were dismissed by the order, would be entitled to a termination payment of approximately one month’s salary.

Retirees, war widows and others who were receiving pensions before the war will still receive them.

“These payments are subject to an important limitation,” the statement said. “Those who are barred from public employment by the May 16 de-Baathification Order are not eligible to receive these payments.”

“Military and other officers with the rank of Colonel or above will be presumed to be in the barred classes, unless they prove otherwise,” it added.—Reuters

COURTS: British troops in control of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, plan to get courts and prisons running again by June 1, a key step in trying to restore order out of the chaos that followed Saddam Hussein’s fall.

The British have already rehired around 1,000 policemen from the city’s former force of 6,000, and are mounting joint patrols around Basra. But when police make arrests, there are few places to detain suspected criminals, and many law-breakers are simply being set free after a stern ticking off from the British.

Rather than training Iraqi judges from scratch, the British will use judges who served during Saddam’s rule.

“It’s important to get the old judges back to work, get the courts working again, somewhere where justice can be seen to be done,” an official. He said it was crucial that Iraqis ran the system, rather than have laws imposed by the British.

“We have to focus on Iraqi jurisdiction. That’s essential. If we’re not focused on that, we’re getting it wrong,” he said.

The British acknowledge that by hiring policemen and judges who worked during Saddam’s rule, they risk putting former Saddam loyalists in positions of power. He said Iraq’s existing legal code provided a sound foundation to conduct trials.

“There’s nothing much wrong with Iraqi law,” he said. “Obviously there were some pieces put into the law by the previous regime which were unsavoury, and we will remove those.”—AFP