(Recasts with Talabani comments)

By Mustapha Mahmoud

KIRKUK, Iraq, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Iraq's president said on Saturday he would back a law that would give thousands of former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party their old jobs back.

Iraq's Shi'ite-led government passed the "Accountability and Justice Law" last month, winning praise from Washington for helping to promote reconciliation between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs who were dominant under Saddam Hussein.

"It is a good law for the current situation," President Jalal Talabani told reporters in the northern Iraq city of Kirkuk. "I agree with this law and I personally will sign it."

Earlier this week, Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Arab, said he would not back the legislation.

He said it was flawed because it would force many people given jobs after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion out of those posts so that ex-Baathists could return.

Hashemi had said Talabani, a Kurd, and Shi'ite Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi, the other two members of the Presidency Council, would also not sign off on it.

All members of the council must sign off on laws passed by parliament, otherwise they are sent back to the legislature.

"I had already signed a blueprint of this law before sending it to parliament," Talabani said.

Ahmad Chalabi, a former Iraqi deputy prime minister and head of the committee which drew up the law, said it was probably too late to change the legislation.

"I believe it would be difficult and time-consuming to get amendments passed on this law in the parliament," Chalabi, a secular Shi'ite, told a media conference on Saturday.

"I believe that people who voted for this law who are now objecting to it should have considered this before they voted."

Washington introduced "de-Baathification" under U.S. administrators in Iraq after the invasion to topple Saddam, but has acknowledged the measures went too far.

Hashemi told Reuters on Thursday the council was unlikely to ratify the law in its present form because "the spirit of revenge" was clear in many of its articles.

Many ex-Baathists have already rejoined the military and the civil service in the absence of a law and there have been suggestions they could be purged a second time.

Washington asked Iraqi lawmakers to ease some measures so that middle and low-ranking Baathists could return to work.

Chalabi said a "blanket" return of Baathists would not be allowed under the law, which is regarded as a benchmark in drawing Sunni Arabs into the political process and away from the insurgency and sectarian bloodshed that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis. (Writing by Paul Tait and Michael Holden; editing by Robert Woodward)

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