"Many Iraqis have complained to me that the de-Baathification policy has been applied unevenly and unjustly," said Bremer

WASHINGTON, April 24 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – One year after driving thousands of people jobless in vital service sectors on charges of membership in the ousted Baath party, Washington admitted the mistake and decided to remedy it.

"Many Iraqis have complained to me that the de-Baathification policy has been applied unevenly and unjustly," U.S. civil administrator in Iraq Paul Bremer said in a rare address to Iraqis on Friday, April 23.

He admitted that the complains were "legitimate", reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Bremer announced measures to speed up the reinstatement of thousands of teachers who lost their jobs because they were members of Saddam Hussein’s ruling Baath party.

He also added that members of the disbanded army would be allowed to join the ranks of the new U.S.-trained army.

"More of these officers with honorable records -- from the former army and elsewhere -- will serve in the months ahead as your new army grows.

"Over 70 percent of all the men in the Iraqi army and (the paramilitary) Iraqi Civil Defense Corps served honorably in the former army," said Bremer.

Thousands of Iraqis were laid off when Bremer announced on May 23, the dissolution of the Iraqi army and several ministries.

The fired chief army officers turned into sellers and drivers to make ends meet after the dissolution, which law experts along with human rights activists called unfair and illegal.

'Mistakes'

Brahimi said de-Baathification left "surgeons, engineers and school teachers …stewing at home instead of rebuilding society."

Bremer’s decision had also drown fire from the U.N. because it left Iraq in a chaotic state as thousands of teachers, university professors, doctors and other sorely-needed personnel were dismissed under the policy.

U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi criticized the de-Baathification policy, saying people with these professions were ousted at a time when they were much needed.

"Banning party members from top jobs led to the dismissal of "10,000 or more" surgeons, engineers and school teachers who are stewing at home instead of rebuilding society," he said Friday on ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

"They are very badly needed. They should go back," added the U.N. diplomat, complaining the appeals process was painfully slow.

Salama al-Khafaji, a member of the U.S.-sanctioned Iraqi Interim Governing Council,  agreed.

"There is a difference between "Saddamists, who were serving Saddam, and the Baathists who were not Saddamists. Those (Baathists) could be brought back," said his chief aide Fateh Kashef al-Ghataa.

Rick Barton, an analyst with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the new decision "points out that making mistakes at the front end takes a heroic effort later to reverse."

Most Iraqis would welcome the change, though it reinforces the impression the occupiers invaded without a coherent plan to run the country, he was quoted as saying Saturday, April 24, by the USA Today.

Barton, co-author of a study on Iraq last year for the Pentagon, said a quarter of Iraq's working-age population were Baath party members.

Richard Perle, a former Pentagon adviser and an architect of the Iraq invasion, said reinstalling former Baath party "could jeopardize the underlying American moral basis for the war."

The U.S. claimed the invasion was meant to end the tyranny of the former regime's political and military establishment and dismantle alleged weapons of mass destruction, none of which have been found one year after the occupation.