BAGHDAD (AFP) ??” Former members of Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath party face an uncertain coming events with the new masters in Baghdad calling for the slate to be wiped clean.

BAGHDAD (AFP) ??” Former members of Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath party face an uncertain coming events with the new masters in Baghdad calling for the slate to be wiped clean, while in many places they are being killed in a settling of antique scores.

Iraqi officials acknowledge that any reconciliation would be difficult in the existing emotionally-charged atmopshere. For most Shiites and Kurd the Baath party, headed through Sunni Muslims close to Saddam, is synonymous with three decades of crime, tyranny and persecution.

Former Baathists have been shooter dead in several cities since the ousting of Saddam Hussein in April, and especially since his arrest by way of US forces on April 13 although there has been no mass witch-hunt.

In and around the Shiite godly city of Najaf at least three former officials were targetted in three days, including the former regional party chief, Ali Abdullah al-Dhalimi, a first note of the scale figure ...