BAGHDAD, 17 May 2003 — Between 15,000 and 30,000 Baath Party officials will be banned from participating in any future Iraqi government, a senior official with the US reconstruction team said yesterday. The move, said the official, will eliminate Saddam Hussein’s party.

The official from the US Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the move would help the country move on from the legacy of Saddam’s regime. “The Baath Party in Iraq is finished,” the official told reporters at a background briefing.

The reconstruction team’s purging efforts, which the official said would begin within days, are the next step in the United States’ vow to eliminate Baathism from postwar Iraq. The announcement came nearly a week after US Gen. Tommy Franks, the war’s commander, told Iraqis that the Baath Party was dissolved.

Reconstruction officials in Iraq are trying to get the country’s ministries and civil service working again, and are struggling to make sure they purge Saddam sympathizers without gutting the entire bureaucracy. Under Saddam, many civil servants could obtain jobs only after making affiliations with the Baath Party.

The official said exceptions would be made in the winnowing process and also only about 2,000 of the 15,000 to 30,000 Baathists in question were still angling for roles in the new government. The others had melted away and were not a factor, the official said.

“We are indeed serious. This is an indication of how serious we are,” the official said. “It will come out right.”

Former Baathists are fueling crime and anti-American unrest in Iraq, the official said, while “trying to reorganize and reconstruct” the party.

The ORHA official said Iraq’s American overseers would comb through the deposed regime’s records, interview suspected Baathists’ co-workers and seek testimony to make sure that the government is free of the party’s influence.

The official acknowledged the process would prevent some of the country’s most able administrators from helping rebuild the country.

“The de-Baathification will entail some inefficiencies in the running of the government,” the official said. “That’s the price we’re willing to pay in order to extirpate Baathism from Iraqi society.”

Despite the ban, some former Baathists are bound to slip through, while innocents will be denounced by co-workers seeking revenge, the official said.

Yesterday’s order, signed by US civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer, intends to halt Baathists from the party’s top four echelons from any public position — whether in universities, hospitals or minor government posts. An even stricter vetting process awaits officials appointed to Iraq’s ministries dealing with security, such as the ministries of defense and interior.

Still pervasive public signs and displays of Saddam’s likeness have also been banned by the US occupying force, the official said, who spoke in a marble hall inside the former Republican Palace.

ORHA will offer rewards for the whereabouts of senior party officials, the official said.

The order does not specifically ban gatherings of former Baathists, a move the official said could be added later.

Many of the upper-level figures in Saddam’s regime — the most-wanted, including the Iraqi leader himself — are already being pursued by coalition forces.

The Baath Party took power briefly in the early 1960s, then ruled Iraq continuously from 1968 until last month — most of that time under Saddam. As many as 1.5 million of Iraq’s 24 million people belonged to the party under Saddam. But only about 25,000 to 50,000 were full-fledged members — the sort of elite targeted by US officials.

The Baath Party was founded in neighboring Syria in 1943 and spread across the Arab world, promoting Arab superiority and Arab unity with a violent, Soviet-style party structure. Syria is ruled by a rival Baath faction headed by President Bashar Assad.

Meanwhile, Iraqis say their patience with US pledges to restore law and order in Baghdad and to improve the economy is running thin and fear of lawlessness could lead to anti-American violence. Iraqis, many hiding in their homes for fear of being robbed, are now calling for the establishment of any interim government that would end what many see as growing anarchy.

Some Iraqis who had celebrated the downfall of Saddam last month in a US-led invasion now say insecurity outweighs any feeling of political freedom and liberation.

“Under Saddam we lived in fear, now we live in terror from crime and we live in poverty,” said Othman, a taxi driver queuing to fill up his car with petrol.

The absence of law and order was also disrupting the delivery of humanitarian aid. “We are concerned about the security situation,” senior UN aid official Kenzo Oshima told a news conference in Baghdad. “Without adequate security, the delivery of humanitarian assistance will be hampered.”

Iraqis complain that the cost of living has more than doubled in weeks. While the Iraqi dinar’s exchange rate to the dollar has appreciated, prices of food and petrol have risen.

Suha Abdel-Hamid, a wealthy housewife, disappointed with the turn of events in Iraq, said she is now thinking of leaving the country in search of a safer and better life.

“Saddam was brutal and cruel. He suffocated us but at least he restored electricity and normality after the 1991 war. What are the Americans waiting for?” she told Reuters.