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BAGHDAD - Two days after being condemned to death, Saddam Hussein was back in court on Tuesday urging Iraqis "to forgive ... and shake hands" as sectarian tensions over his sentence hampered US efforts to stabilize Iraq.
Saddam was back in court to face charges of genocide against ethnic Kurds, two days after being sentenced to hang for the killing and torture of Shi'ites. An appeal court will review the sentence and no execution is likely this year.
"I call on all Iraqis, Arabs and Kurds, to forgive, reconcile and shake hands," Saddam, in relatively subdued mood compared to the defiance he showed on Sunday, told the court.
US voters were going to the polls in midterm elections seen as a referendum on President George W. Bush's Iraq policy, with the prospect of a shift in direction if Democrats can seize control of Congress from Bush's Republicans.
Bush has hailed Sunday's hanging verdict as a vindication of his removal of Saddam, saying: "The world is better off for it."
But insurgent attacks, sectarian death squads and government paralysis blamed on feuding between rival political parties, have left many Americans thinking Iraq is descending into chaos and calling for the withdrawal of the 150,000 US troops.
The Iraqi government had imposed a two-day curfew to coincide with the verdict, keeping millions of people cooped up in their homes and the streets of Baghdad eerily empty.
Curfew lifted
Residents ventured out on Tuesday for the first time since Saturday night as a vehicle and pedestrian ban was lifted and Baghdad international airport reopened.
A leading Sunni political party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, said two Sunni mosques had been destroyed by militias in the past two days and it blamed the Shi'ite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for failing to protect them.
Sunnis also complained of a string of mortar attacks on the Adhamiya district of Baghdad since Sunday.
Another Sunni party, the Conference of Iraqi People, said it was "seriously considering" withdrawing from Maliki's unity government over attacks it blamed on Shi'ite militias.
An Interior Ministry source said 10 bodies with gunshot wounds had been found around the capital in the last 24 hours.
Reactions to the verdict were sharply divided, largely on sectarian lines. Shi'ites, long oppressed by Saddam, celebrated in the streets. Some Sunni Arabs, among whom Saddam drew much of his support, accused the court of political point-scoring.
In a move to placate the once-dominant Sunni Arab minority, a committee set up by US authorities to purge former Baath Party officials from public life will recommend allowing most back to their jobs, a senior official said on Tuesday.
Ali Faysal al-Lami, executive director of the committee, said a draft amendment would be presented to parliament in the coming days reducing the number of ex-Baathists excluded from public life from 30,000 to just 1,500 senior officials.
The move is a long-standing demand of Sunni Arab leaders and may also appease some critics of the tribunal trying Saddam, who say threats from the de-Baathification committee have been used to bring political pressure on court officials.
Opponents of de-Baathification complain too many people were pushed out of their jobs, including vital officials and many who had joined the party from necessity rather than conviction.
In another move apparently aimed at allaying charges the government is not doing enough to rein in militias, the Interior Ministry said it had charged nearly 100 employees, including a police general and other high-ranking officers, for their roles in torturing detainees in a Baghdad prison.
White House spokesman Tony Snow welcomed both moves.
"We think these are both very important signs of Prime Minister Maliki asserting the kind of leadership that we've been talking about, and that the Iraqi people deserve," he said.
Democrats in the United States were on course to recapture control of the US House of Representatives for the first time since 1994, opinion polls showed, with their chance of taking over the Senate hinging on close races for several key states.
In a campaign dominated by Iraq, Bush defended his handling of the war and questioned what Democrats would do differently.
The US military said a US soldier died on Monday night after a roadside bomb attack on his vehicle in Baghdad, taking the US military death toll in Iraq to 2,837. A British soldier was also killed on Monday in Basra.
- REUTERS
