BAGHDAD, Iraq -The Iraqi government announced new measures Tuesday to retake the country from terrorists and outlaws, including those in uniform, by ordering the army and police to submit to checkpoints, sharply curtailing weapons in public and temporarily closing the borders with Syria and Iran.

The 14-point decree, which also authorizes cordons, house-to-house searches, emergency detentions and electronic eavesdropping, was signed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and read on national television by his handpicked Baghdad security chief, Lt. Gen. Aboud Qanbar.

Qanbar, a Shiite Muslim and Maliki ally whose appointment wasn’t welcomed by American officials, faced the nation in a red beret and an Iraqi officer’s uniform, giving an air of Saddam Hussein-era authority to the decree.

At least one Sunni opposition leader welcomed the plan, but many Baghdad residents greeted it with skepticism. It remains to be seen whether Iraqi forces, some of them heavily infiltrated by Shiite militiamen, will enforce it even-handedly and whether both Shiite and Sunni gunmen will simply melt into the population until the crackdown passes.

Four of the 14 measures are intended to combat the displacement and agony caused by sectarian cleansing of mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad. It orders squatters to vacate the homes of displaced people within 15 days and to return them to the condition in which they found them.

Hareth al-Obeidi of the Sunni-led Iraqi Accordance Front, the leading group in opposition to Maliki in parliament, welcomed the decree, at least the third security plan for Baghdad since the 2003 American invasion of Iraq.

“I think it will work this time,” he said. “It has many positive elements.” He cited the monitoring of police and army by U.S. forces and a pledge that human rights advocates will monitor enforcement and punishment.

Reaction in neighborhoods was mixed.

Youssef al-Musawi, a 27-year-old university engineering instructor who lives in the Shiite slums of Sadr City, said he was “filled with joy” after listening to Qanbar, though he also wanted to see how the plan would be implemented.

“We see lots of things that we think are wrong, like dark windows on vehicles that don’t have plate numbers. God knows what’s inside these cars. No one used to stop them, but now hopefully they will do that.”