Iraq’s new Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, condemned Washington for disbanding Saddam Hussein’s army and said today his government could issue a law reinstating some former Baath party members next week.

He stressed Iraq would no longer threaten its neighbours but called the US dissolution of the army last year one of many grave errors since Saddam’s fall and said he would rebuild strong security forces to combat violence plaguing the country.

“Mistakes, big mistakes, were made including dissolving the army, police services and internal security forces,” Allawi, a CIA-backed former exile opponent of Saddam, told al Jazeera television. “We have begun to rectify these mistakes.”

”Iraq does not assault neighbours or brothers but Iraq must be strong and able to defend itself if necessary,” he said.

Saddam sent his army into Iran and Kuwait and fired rockets at Israel during his three decades in power. After its catastrophic defeat last year, the U.S. governor of Iraq, Paul Bremer, dissolved the 375,000-strong army and imposed a campaign of“de-Baathification” to clear out the old regime.

But Allawi, who broke with the Baath party in the 1970s, has made clear that Iraq needs the expertise of many who worked under Saddam if it is to rebuild security and intelligence services that can quell Islamist militants and sectarian militias once 150,000 mostly American troops leave the country.
He had already said Baathists innocent of major crimes should be rehabilitated:

“The decision will be announced next week,” he told Al Jazeera of plans for a law to that effect.

ATTACKS ON FOREIGNERS
Saturday saw a spate of attacks, including one that wounded would-be recruits to the new Iraqi army, one that killed a U.S. soldier in Baghdad, two apparently aimed at foreign civilians and one that killed the brother of the man believed to have betrayed Saddam's sons to U.S. forces.

But as the U.S. occupying authority prepares to hand power to the new interim government at the end of June, violence at last seemed to have abated around Najaf, two months after rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr launched a Shi'ite uprising in the south.

Wrangling over a United Nations resolution to endorse the handover of sovereignty to Allawi's administration on June 30 also looked close to being resolved. The United States and Britain offered a third draft giving Baghdad's interim government the right to ask U.S.-led forces to leave.

A roadside bomb killed one U.S. soldier and wounded three close to a district known as a stronghold of Sadr support in Baghdad. Five soldiers were killed nearby on Friday.

On the capital's main airport highway, two civilian vehicles of a type favoured by foreign contractors were set ablaze and witnesses saw at least two charred corpses.

In the northern city of Mosul a foreign security guard was killed and two were wounded when their vehicles came under fire, and a rocket wounded 17 Iraqis at an army recruiting post.

Salaah al-Zeidan, brother of the Iraqi believed to have led U.S. troops to Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay last year, was killed in an attack on his car along with three family members.

U.S. troops killed Uday and Qusay at Zeidan's brother's house in Mosul in July. Local people believe Nawaf al-Zeidan, a distant relative of Saddam, fled Iraq with a $30 million reward.

RESOLUTION NEARS
U.S. officials would like to see a U.. resolution passed in the coming week, and U.S. President George W. Bush said he was optimistic:

“I am confident we will get one soon,” he said on a visit to Rome.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said a letter sent by Allawi to the Security Council on Saturday detailing how his government would oversee foreign troops should bring a deal closer.

Russia said it was still not entirely satisfied.

Two months ago the prospects looked dim for an Iraqi government, with no popular mandate and few security forces, to take over the running of the country.

But the siege of the violent city of Falluja ended when the U.S. Marines cut a deal with former generals in Saddam's army and the guerrillas who had fought them.

In the south, U.S.-led troops have squeezed Sadr's fighters out of town after town, helped by pressure from Shi'ite elders. The young cleric offered a truce on Friday in his last bastion, Najaf. It seemed to be holding on Saturday as police returned to patrol the centre while guerrillas and U.S. troops withdrew.
Crucially, U.S. commanders softened a demand that Sadr turn himself in on a murder charge, leaving his fate in Iraqi hands.

Setting the seal of the Shi'ite establishment on the deal, Sadr was granted an audience with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the senior cleric in Iraq.

“He thanked Moqtada al-Sadr for solving the crisis and ending the resistance,” a Sistani spokesman said.

”Brother Moqtada al-Sadr will talk with legal authorities via committees overseen by the national security adviser,” and will disband his militia, Allawi said. (Additional reporting by Maher al-Thanoon in Mosul and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Najaf)