Today's US/Baath alliance news

Nahrainnet.net, the Sadrist-leaning news-site, says this:

In a serious followup to the recent reports that have spoken of an American/British plan to return the Baathists to the scene of power in Iraq, including participation in, or control of, the government, via what the General Secretary of the Arab League has called "the broadening of national reconciliation in Iraq", to include Baathists, the Norwegian newspaper [looks like Liftes Gang, I'm still not sure what this is] publishes an important report about communications between the Baathists, the American intelligence agency CIA, and British officials responsible for the Iraq file.

The report talks about pressure on America from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Gulf countries to curb Shiite influence, and to work for the return of Baathist army and intelligence officers to power in Iraq. And it talks about three special flights, carrying Baathist politicians and officers from Sanaa to Baghdad in the last two weeks.

The above-mentioned Nahrainnet.net link includes as an appendix the whole Norwegian article, it is very convenient, you can go there, run the thing through the Google language-translator Arabic-to-English for the gist of the Nahrainnet piece, then run it through in Norwegian-to-English to get the gist of the Norwegian piece. Very convenient.

In any event, the Norwegian report says most of the meetings in question were in Jordan and Yemen, and it says the American ambassador in Sanaa, Stephen Seche, has played an important role in the talks. It says the Baathists who have gone to Baghad for talks, are relying on security and legal assurances from Maliki, obtained as a result of pressure from the Americans.

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Lest you think it is only the Nahrainnet types that are reading Baathist meaning into the above-quoted phrase of Amr Mussa, here is what the perhaps Baath-leaning paper Azzaman has to say this morning in its summary of one or more of Mussa's meeting with Iraqi government leaders:

A source summarized what happened for Azzaman by saying the main concepts Mussa proposed to the group were centered on amending the constitution calling it the final and necessary guarantor of reconciliation. And the source indicated that he went so far as to say that lack of constitutional amendment will mean lack of reconciliation.

And the other point the source mentioned was that Mussa promised to pass along Iraqi government requests to Arab regimes for debt-relief.