White House spokesman Scott McClellan said a policy review could
allow some former members of Saddam's Baath party to join an interim Iraqi
government being put together by the United Nations.
Around 400,000
people were thrown out of work last May when US administrator Paul Bremer
dissolved the armed forces, security services and defence and information
ministries. An appeals system was set up to allow them to reclaim
jobs.
"The appeals process sometimes has been slower in
implementation than was originally designed," US spokesman Dan Senor told a
Baghdad news conference.
Those who were Baath Party members in name only would be
welcomed, spokesmen said, but those tainted by their role in Saddam's "brutal"
regime before it was toppled a year ago would remain excluded.
The top echelons of the Baath Party were drawn mainly from
Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority to which Saddam himself belonged.
Resistance fighters in Sunni heartlands north and west of
Baghdad have put up the stiffest resistance to the US-led occupation, partly
because the community has felt penalised and excluded from power since Saddam's
fall.
Handover questioned
While President George Bush has touted the planned 30 June
sovereignty handover in Iraq as a landmark, congressional Democrats on Thursday
questioned whether it in effect would be just another day in the US-led
occupation.
Administration plans for a "super embassy" and the continued
presence of some 135,000 US troops mean Iraqis will see little change after the
transfer, several lawmakers said.
They said Bush risked raising
false expectations that could backfire in another surge of violence.
But Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman told the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, "My message today ... is on the first of July
Iraqis will be in charge of Iraq, Iraqis will run Iraq."
US House
of Representatives Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters the Bush
administration was trying to create an "illusion ... that there will be a
transfer to a sovereign government of Iraq".
Pelosi, a California Democrat, said she thought the White House
was not showing "too much angst as to what the nature of the Iraqi government
will be, starting June 30" because it is essentially a handover of authority
from the US-led occupation to the new US embassy there.