BAGHDAD, July 19: Recruitment began on Saturday for a pared-down Iraqi army that will be “accountable to the nation” as it replaces the massive military built up by ousted dictator Saddam Hussein, the US military said.

Several hundred Iraqi men, many of them soldiers of the toppled government, filled out application forms in Baghdad hoping to join the first 1,000-strong light-armoured mechanised infantry battalion which the coalition said it would begin training in August.

“This army will be a representative national army, led and manned by Iraqis of all ethnic, regional and religious backgrounds,” the US military said in a statement. “It will be accountable to the nation.

“The New Iraqi Army will be the beginning and not the end of the new Iraqi armed forces which will defend the Iraqi nation rather than a particular leader or regime,” Brigadier Jonathon Riley said in the statement.

Recruitment had also begun in the southern city of Basra, and Mosul in the north, he added.

Recruits will be paid 60 dollars per month, Riley said.

“We’re very happy with the rate they’re coming in,” a senior US official said on condition of anonymity.

Captain Jim Hickman of the First Armoured Division told AFP the screening process, including physical examinations, interviews and fingerprinting, began in a closed-off area of Al-Muthana, a disused airport in the capital.

Applicants at the entrance, however, said they were told to fill out the forms and return as of Sunday.

MEHDI’S ARMY: Some 30 Iraqis showed up at a mosque in a Shia Muslim suburb of Baghdad on Saturday to enrol in the so-called “Mehdi army” whose creation was announced by a prominent Shia cleric a day earlier.