Saddam in defiant admission as bombs blast Baghdad

BAGHDAD - Saddam Hussein admitted today that he signed orders leading to the execution of dozens of Shi'ites in the 1980s but said he was acting within the law as Iraq's president.
As he faced his judges in a Baghdad courtroom, bombs killed about 30 people after a week of the bloodiest sectarian violence since US forces overthrew his Sunni-led government in 2003. The attacks have pushed Iraq to the brink of civil war.

One car bomb killed 25 in mainly Shi'ite east Baghdad, one of three such attacks just before the court sat; after dark, mortar rounds shook the city centre and residents reported a gunbattle around a Sunni mosque in the south of the capital.

Police near the northern city of Kirkuk said a police convoy was ambushed and dozens of officers were unaccounted for.

Saddam, who faces hanging if convicted of crimes against humanity, told the court in a measured speech that an order to try 148 men from the Shi'ite town of Dujail after an attempt on his life there in 1982 was a legal process, as was the razing of farms around the town after their owners were executed.

"Where is the crime?" he asked, his manner calm compared to tirades he has previously launched during four months of proceedings which he has derided as a show trial mounted by the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government backed by the United States.

Prosecutors, who previously introduced witnesses to testify to torture in Saddam's prisons, presented an array of documents, an audiotape of Saddam talking to an official and aerial photographs showing where date palm groves were flattened in an effort to tie Saddam personally to the alleged crimes.

The court adjourned to March 12.

The trial has been overshadowed by fears Iraq's sectarian tensions are out of control after reprisal killings that officials say have cost more than 450 lives. The toll could be much higher as many people say relatives have just disappeared.

Saddam, a Sunni who justified his harsh rule by the need for national unity, took the chance to comment from the dock, though in more measured tones than earlier in the trial. "The people must be united," he said. "All religions, all ethnic groups." "God willing, we shall be," replied the chief judge, a Kurd who has been strict with the eight defendants but gave Saddam time to say his piece, ensuring nationwide television coverage.

Religious representatives of the once-dominant Sunni Muslim minority, accusing the Shi'ite-led government and US forces of failing to halt attacks by Shi'ite militiamen, called on Sunnis to come out in force to protect their mosques.

Saddam-era tanks from the new, US-trained Iraqi army have deployed to protect some threatened neighbourhoods and the US military says it has a rapid reaction force standing by.

Shi'ite Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said he would move ahead rapidly to form a national unity government Washington has been pressing for since Sunnis took part in a December election.

But signs of opposition to Jaafari's appointment as prime minister emerged. Political sources said Kurdish, Sunni and secular leaders discussed whether to work with Jaafari, who last month won an internal ballot in the dominant Shi'ite Islamist Alliance by a single vote against stiff opposition.

The main Sunni bloc has boycotted negotiations in protest at the violence and a senior Shi'ite government official said on Tuesday it would take at least two months to forge a coalition, raising questions over how effectively the authorities can tackle Iraq's gravest crisis since the US invasion of 2003.

In some districts, residents have formed armed patrols and thrown up barricades. Sunnis fear Shi'ite militias nominally loyal to parties in the US-backed interim government, while Shi'ites worry about Sunni insurgents whose past attacks have targeted Shi'ite civilians as often as US or Iraqi forces.

Families have fled their homes in some areas. Others say they are packed and ready to run if need be.

Yesterday, when bombs killed some 60 people in Baghdad, US President George W Bush said Iraqis faced a choice between "chaos or unity". But, with polls showing his popularity dropping among Americans, he dismissed talk of civil war.

Any full-scale civil war could inflame the entire Middle East and thwart Bush's hopes of withdrawing US troops.

Angrily listing alleged attacks on Sunnis in a news conference broadcast live across the mostly Sunni Arab world on Al Jazeera television, a spokesman for the Muslim Clerics Association accused Shi'ites of attacking mosques, and police of attacking the home of the group's head, Harith al-Dari.

"Our brothers in all areas must protect their mosques as the government has failed to do so," Abdul Salam al-Qubaisi said.

There was also criticism of the government from within its own Shi'ite and Kurdish political groupings. A senior security official said he had warned of attacks on Shi'ite shrines two weeks before the destruction of the Golden Mosque in Samarra. Coalition officials and the main Sunni political bloc criticised Jaafari's cabinet for ignoring the threat.

- REUTERS