Rice: Iraqi reconciliation making remarkable progress

US SECRETARY of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday said Iraq’s national reconciliation has moved along “quite remarkably”, citing a new law that lets thousands of former members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party reclaim government jobs or pensions.

Ms Rice, who split off from President George W Bush’s Middle East tour for a visit to Baghdad, said the Iraqi parliament’s approval on Saturday of the US-sought benchmark law was a first step and showed that last year’s “surge” of American forces was paying dividends.

“It is clearly a step forward for national reconciliation — a step forward for healing the wounds of the past, and it will have to be followed up by implementation that is in the same spirit of national reconciliation,” she said during a news conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.