Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has "confessed" to ordering executions and waging a campaign against Kurds in which thousands of people are said to have been killed, President Jalal Talabani said.
Talabani did not say whether Saddam had actually admitted to committing any crimes, or had merely acknowledged that he was head of state and commander in chief of the army at the time of various military operations.
"I met the investigator who questioned Saddam," he told Iraqiya state television in an interview late on Tuesday. "He said he had extracted important confessions from Saddam Hussein and he signed them."
The revelations came amid continuing violence in Iraq overnight Tuesday and on Wednesday in northern Iraq where US and Iraqi forces are fighting insurgents.
Asked about the confessions, Talabani replied: "About the crimes he committed: he confessed to al-Anfal and the executions," adding that Saddam had said: "The orders were released by me."
Al-Anfal was a campaign against the Kurds between 1986 and 1989 in which over 100,000 people are said to have been killed and many villages destroyed. Talabani is a Kurd.
"Saddam deserves a death sentence 20 times a day because he tried to assassinate me 20 times," he said, recalling his days as a Kurdish rebel leader fighting the Baghdad authorities.
Talabani's comments, on the eve of a visit to the United States, appeared to be part of an orchestrated move by the government to prepare Iraqis for Saddam's execution, expected to be carried out by hanging.
The official government spokesman said at the weekend that Saddam's trial, on a single charge of mass killings in reprisal for a 1982 assassination attempt, would begin on October 19.
He said if Saddam were found guilty in this case, the court could dispense with the need to try him for other crimes - clearing the way for an early execution.
Iraq scrapped the death penalty immediately after the US invasion in March 2003, but has since reintroduced it and executed its first three convicted criminals last week.
LINE UNDER SADDAM ERA:
Iraq's Shia Muslim and Kurdish-dominated government is trying to draw a line under the Saddam era by trying him and introducing a new constitution in October.
Both moves are likely to prove contentious and risk alienating the Sunni Arab minority from which Saddam derived his support. Sunnis have lost their leading role since the fall of Saddam and fear the new constitution will institutionalise this.
The text was adopted by parliament late last month, but many leading Sunnis vowed to work for its rejection in a referendum due by October 15.
Informal talks between Sunnis and Shi'ites to amend the text to make it palatable to all sides collapsed on Tuesday, and five million copies of the draft adopted by parliament will be printed starting on Thursday for distribution ahead of the vote.
Tensions between Iraq's three main communities have been further strained by the deaths of over 1,000 Shi'ite pilgrims in a stampede at a religious ceremony in Baghdad last week.
Shi'ites blame Sunnis for firing mortars into a crowd and spreading rumours there was a suicide bomber in their midst, causing panic which led to the stampede.
US SECURITY GUARDS KILLED:
Four US security guards died when a bomb hit their sports utility vehicle near the southern city of Basra, where British troops are based, the US embassy said in a statement.
All four worked for a private security firm supporting the Regional US Embassy Office in Basra, it said, adding that no British or US troops were involved in the incident.
But another US contractor, Roy Hallums, was freed by US troops from a remote farmhouse near Baghdad after being kidnapped in Mosul last November, a military spokesman said.
A military statement said Hallums was freed after the military received information from an Iraqi detainee.
In the northern town of Tal Afar, where Iraqi and US troops have battled an insurgency for several days, hospital sources said four civilians were killed and one wounded in a suicide car bomb attack on a checkpoint late on Tuesday.
A further three died and two were wounded in separate security operations in Tal Afar on Tuesday, witnesses said.
Many people have left Tal Afar in the last few days.
In the Kurdish town of Kalar, one protester was killed and 16 wounded in riots over a failure to supply electricity and water, Dr Omar Aziz of Kalar's general hospital said.
Several buildings were set on fire including a children's hospital, a radio station, the fire department and an education ministry building. Seventy protesters were detained.
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