Iraqi president says Saddam should hang '20 times'

BAGHDAD - Saddam Hussein has confessed to crimes and should be hanged "20 times," his successor as Iraq's president said while confirming that he will not sign a death warrant himself.

"Saddam deserves a death sentence 20 times a day because he tried to assassinate me 20 times," Jalal Talabani said in a lengthy interview on Iraqiya state television, recalling his own days as a Kurdish rebel leader fighting the Baghdad authorities.

Saddam had confessed to crimes, he said in answer to a question, though it was not clear what details Talabani had of a legal process that is intended to be separate from Iraqi politics.

"There are 100 reasons to sentence Saddam to death," he said, two days after the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government confirmed that the deposed leader will go on trial on October 19, along with several aides, accused of killing 143 Shi'ite villagers after a failed assassination bid at Dujail in 1982.

Last week, Iraq hanged the first three criminals to be sentenced to death since Saddam's overthrow by US forces.

In that case, too, Talabani refused to sign the warrant but handed responsibility to his Shi'ite vice president, Adel Abdel Mehdi. He explained his stance by saying that as leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan he had once signed up his left-wing party to an international ban on capital punishment.

"My not signing does not mean that I will block the decision of the court," Talabani said, while stressing that political pressure would play no part in the judges' decision.

Saddam's main lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi, complained after meeting his client on Monday that the October 19 trial date had not been agreed through the Special Tribunal set up to try Saddam and his closest associates.

"Setting a date for the trial within days, weeks or months is unacceptable because the court alleges that it has 36 tonnes of documents and the defence team cannot come to the trial without studying what the court has of evidence," Dulaimi told Reuters on Monday after he had met Saddam near Baghdad.

SENSITIVE TIMING

It seems likely, however, that Saddam will go on trial on October 19. The process, for the killings at Dujail, will therefore start days after a referendum on a new constitution that the US-backed authorities intend should bury his legacy.

The trial may stir passions among some minority Sunni Arabs, who dominated Iraq under Saddam and before.

For that reason, the timing of the trial has been sensitive.

The timing of any conviction and sentencing, and indeed execution, may be similarly affected by a parliamentary election due in December. One official involved in the process forecast the trial would last weeks rather than months.

He also said recently that Saddam might be executed if convicted only of the killings at Dujail, so that further trials might never take place.

The Iraqi government, reflecting a popular mood, seems keen on dispatching the former leader quickly, hence the choice of the relatively small Dujail case to begin the process.

Prosecutors have said Saddam's direct responsibility for the deaths at Dujail may be easier to prove than in larger cases involving alleged genocide of Shi'ites and Kurds.

The trial, much of which officials have said will probably be televised, will be held in a specially prepared building inside the fortified Green Zone government compound on the Tigris -- once Saddam's presidential palace complex.

- REUTERS