The dinar gets a face-lift

Baghdad

U.S. authorities will issue new Iraqi currency to replace dinars carrying the grinning image of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein. The new design will be based on the faceless Swiss dinar, Iraq’s pre-1991 currency, which still circulates in the country’s northern Kurdish areas. The new dinar will be introduced into circulation during a three-month period beginning Oct. 15, to be exchanged “at parity” with the old ones. Some Iraqis expressed joy at the redesign. “We will be happy to get rid of Saddam’s face,” Baghdad money-changer Hillal Sultan told Agence France-Presse, “and this useless money.”