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Iraq's most senior Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said on Monday he opposes a new draft law that would allow thousands of former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to return to public life.
Coming the morning after a Sunday meeting with de-Baathification Commission chief, Ahmed Chalabi, Reuters reports that:
"Sistani's office refuses the replacement of the law because it is not an Iraqi demand but it is a political demand to please some sides," an aide to Sistani said in the holy city of Najaf.
Ahmed Chalabi, current head of Iraq's de-Baathification Commission, met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on Sunday to brief him on legislation intended to reinstate some minority Sunni officeholders of the former Saddam regime.
"I briefed the Grand Ayatollah on the law that is suggested by the president and the prime minister to replace the debaathification law," Chalabi said in a press conference in the holy city of Najaf after his meeting with Sistani.
Chalabi said he was "honored to meet with Sistani and listen to his instructions and guidance," adding the meeting "extensively dealt with all developments in Iraq," according to the independent Iraqi news agency VOI.
The draft legislation would replace the current de-Baathification Commission with a former-Baathist rehabilitation program. The Commission has been strongly criticized for the wholesale banning of all former Baath party members from government positions, regardless of their reasons for joining. The new draft law, as reported in the AP, would:
"...set a three-month challenge period after which ex-Baath party loyalists would be immune from legal punishment for their actions during Saddam's reign. The draft law, which excludes former regime members already charged with or sought for crimes, also would grant state pensions to many Baathists, even if they were denied posts in the government or military."
The Commission, which has proposed reducing the number of former Baathists excluded from government office from 30,000 to 1,500, said the draft legislation "opens the doors for (Saddam's) security and intelligence officers to return to their posts".
However, the law must still pass through parliament on its journey to ratification, and has, according to the BBC, already drawn opposition from the Shia chairman of the current de-Baathification programme, "Ali al-Lami, said the proposed law was "unconstitutional" and would "reinstate employees of Saddam's security agencies and paramilitary forces"."
"It will allow the leaders of the Baath to take the jobs of the prime minister and president and judicial authority. We are sure the majority in the parliament will not approve it," commission executive director Ali Faisal al-Lami told Reuters.
Some Middle East analysts have said the law may be a measure to head off opposition to the new Iraqi unity government from predominantly Sunni neighbours such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan, at the meeting of the Arab League in Riyadh.
