Blair opposed to Hussein hanging

LONDON, England (AP) -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Monday he opposed the death penalty for Saddam Hussein but that the deposed Iraqi leader's trial had reminded the world of his brutality.

Asked about Saddam's sentence at his monthly press conference, Blair noted that Britain opposed the death penalty "whether it's Saddam or anyone else."

But he said the trial "gives us a chance to see again what the past in Iraq was, the brutality, the tyranny, the hundreds of thousands of people he killed, the wars."

On Sunday, the Iraqi High Tribunal in Baghdad convicted Saddam and sentenced him to hang for crimes against humanity in the 1982 killings of 148 people in a single Shiite town. Two other co-defendants also were sentenced to death.

Blair said the trial "also then helps point the way to the only future" the Iraqi people want: "a nonsectarian Iraq in which people from different communities live together and decide their future through democracy. I don't underestimate for a single instant the difficulties involved in achieving that, but it's a battle worth fighting."

Blair's views won't affect the fate of Saddam, whose sentence was imposed by an Iraqi court. But it does put the prime minister at odds with his close ally, President Bush, who praised the verdict.

In a testy exchange with a television journalist, Blair repeatedly referred to the statement Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett issued after the verdict on Sunday. She welcomed "that Saddam Hussein and the other defendants have faced justice" but made no comment on the capital sentence.

The prime minister appeared uncomfortable when pressed about the use of the death penalty against Saddam, repeating his general opposition to capital punishment several times but avoiding direct questions about the former dictator's fate.

"Our position on the death penalty is well known. We're opposed to it," Blair said.

But Blair relented under intense questioning, saying "We are against the death penalty ... whether it's Saddam or anybody else."

"However, what I think is important about this is to recognize that this trial of Saddam has been handled by the Iraqis themselves and they will take the decision about it," he said. "It does give us a very clear reminder of the total and barbaric brutality of that regime. The numbers of people that died, hundreds of thousands of them .... That doesn't alter our position on the death penalty at all, but it simply does give us a reminder of that. "

He sought to play down the importance of Saddam's fate, saying "there are other and bigger issues to talk about."

The death sentences in Iraq automatically go to a nine-judge appeals panel, which has unlimited time to review the case. If the verdicts and sentences are upheld, the executions must be carried out within 30 days.