BAGHDAD, May 17: Baghdad’s university reopened for business on Saturday, with hundreds of students returning in hope of resuming courses and a new director of the campus in the process of being elected by the 900 teachers.

“The old university leadership is going to be replaced. There’s a need of change,” said Andrew Erdmann, the US official put in charge of overhauling the Iraqi education system and implementing an order from US administrator Paul Bremer to weed out former Baathists.

He underlined that the new management team would be selected in line with the new order, but acknowledged that many teaching staff were closely linked to Saddam Hussein’s party apparatus.

“It’s imperative that that these key sectors such as universities are not run by high ranking officials. But we understand that many of them here were low level,” he asserted, pointing out that those targetted by the ‘de-Baathification’ ruling were limited to the most senior members.

While teaching staff went ahead voting in a ballot for a new team, hundreds of students poured back onto the campus in the hope of resuming their studies with courses officially scheduled to start again Saturday.

But “classes should not begin before several days”, said oriental language professor Ali Zwein. Even thought the university escaped the fighting largely intact, several buildings are still unusable and many teachers have still not returned to work. —AFP