"We expect to begin recruiting members for the new Iraqi corps before the end of this month," Bremer told a Baghdad press conference amid growing concern within his administration about the implications for both security and the economy of so many jobless men with military training.

He said the first jobs for ex-servicemen would be found as soon as next week cleaning the barracks of Saddam Hussein's dissolved armed forces in readiness for use by the new corps.

The US overseer gave no figure for the size of the new Iraqi army but in recent days officials have said they expect it to number some 40,000 to 50,000 personnel, a tenth of the nominal fighting strength of the defeated army.

"We are fully aware of the difficulties that have been created" by the dissolution of Saddam's army 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."

He confirmed that he had used his exemption powers for the army medical corps in an attempt to tackle the post-war needs of the battered Iraqi health service.

"We did take a large number of doctors who were essentially idle," he said.

In recent weeks, there have been almost daily protests around Iraq by soldiers angry that they have been left jobless on the streets with the offer of just a single month's severance pay.

At a demonstration in the capital last week, former lieutenant colonel Ziad Khalaf warned that there were ex-soldiers ready to carry out suicide attacks against the coalition out of desperation at their plight.

"We are soldiers used to combat and we have volunteers for martyrdom," he told AFP.

Bremer hailed the fact that Iraqis were now allowed to demonstrate peacefully outside his headquarters in Saddam's main Baghdad palace after years of being allowed nowhere near the site.

But he reacted angrily to the talk of violence against coalition forces.

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

"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."

Bremer disputed the scale of the hardship caused by the collapse of Saddam's army. He said many of the 400,000 had disappeared long before the entry of US-led troops into Baghdad and some had been killed in the fighting.

He said his administration was also preparing broader programmes aimed at tackling unemployment, not just within the former military but among state employees who had been made redundant as well.

Some 70 million dollars will be spent on a new nationwide community action programme to be launched in the next few weeks to clean up neighbourhoods and pump money into the local economy.

WAR.WIRE