"We expect to begin recruiting members for the New Iraqi Corps before the end of this month," Bremer told a Baghdad press conference after a fresh demonstration by former soldiers outside the city centre headquarters of his administration.

The US overseer said the first ex-servicemen would be recruited as soon as next week to clean up the former barracks of Saddam Hussein's dissolved armed forces in readiness for use by the new corps.

"We are fully aware of the difficulties that have been created" by the dissolution of Saddam Hussein's armed forces as part of a two-week-old clampdown on his Baath party and other core institutions of his regime, said Bremer.

"Our objective in de-Baathification was quite clear -- it was to go after people at the core of Saddam Hussein's ugly regime, it was not to go after people who joined the army merely to feed themselves."

Bremer stressed that a return to the army would only be offered to "demobilised enlisted men".

Officers above the rank of lieutenant colonel are excluded from public life by the de-Baathification order and Bremer said: "In the army I do not expect there will be many exemptions."

The US overseer confirmed that he had used his powers under the order to make an exception for the army medical corps in view of the post-war needs of the Iraqi health service.

"We did take a large number of doctors who were essentially idle because there was no army any more," he said.

Bremer hailed the fact that Iraqis were now allowed to demonstrate peacefully outside his headquarters in Saddam's main Baghdad palace, pointing out that in the ousted strongman's day such protests would have been unthinkable.

But he said the US-led coalition would not tolerate threats of suicide bombings of the sort that have been made by some former army officers in recent days.

"We are not going to be blackmailed into providing programmes because of threats of terrorism," said Bremer.

"People who prepare to commit violence against the coalition and its officers whether they are civilian or military will be dealt with by the full force of the law."

WAR.WIRE