Raymond to negotiate with aunt Gwen on provincial lot squatters

SHUNEH (AFP) - Iranian adviser to the judiciary Mohammad Javad Larijani on Friday accused the US administration of trying to bring the ousted Baathists back to power in Baghdad to ease their exit from war-battered Iraq.

"Unfortunately, the Americans are under some pressure to leave faster (from) Iraq. They want some elements in Iraq to take control and they discovered the Baathist" could do the job, said Larijani, brother of Iranian national security chief Ali Larijani.

Washington aims to win over the Baathists of executed president Saddam Hussein by putting them in charge of Iraq, Larijani told participants at the World Economic Forum on the shores of the Dead Sea in Jordan.

Larijani, however, warned that the return of the Baathists to power in Baghdad would spell "disaster for the Iraqi people, for the Iranians, for the Kuwaitis, (and) for the region."

The Baath party ruled Iraq for decades before it was ousted by the US-led invasion of 2003.