28 March 2004	Sunday	06 Safar 1425

PARIS, March 27: The French lawyer known for defending Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and guerilla Carlos the Jackal said on Saturday that Saddam Hussein's nephew had chosen him to represent the former Iraqi president.

Jacques Verges said in a telephone interview he had received a letter from Ali Barzan al Tikriti, whose father Barzan al Tikriti is Saddam Hussein's half-brother, asking him to defend his uncle.

The US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) in Baghdad is setting up a war crimes tribunal to try Saddam Hussein on charges that may include genocide and crimes against humanity.

Washington has said the 66-year-old Saddam, whose interrogation is being led by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), should be tried in Iraq.

Jacques Verges, who is also defending former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, said he had accepted the job of defending Saddam and suggested his strategy would focus on the role played by the United States and other countries in supporting the Iraqi leader in the 1980s.

"We know very well that the Anglo-Americans armed Saddam Hussein, that the chemical weapons were sold by the allies," Mr Verges said in a telephone interview.

SIGHTS ON RUMSFELD: Washington helped Saddam Hussein obtain intelligence and military equipment and, according to a US Centers for Disease Control document in the Senate record, Iraq also obtained from the United States biological agents that could have been turned into weapons.

The United States was at the time supporting Iraq in its war against Iran.

Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the former Soviet Union also supplied Iraq with equipment, expertise and funding over the years.

The West's close military and commercial relationship with Saddam Hussein ended when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

Mr Verges singled out US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a key advocate of last year's invasion, for his role 20 years ago as a special envoy of President Ronald Reagan.

He said that if a trial of Saddam took place, Mr Rumsfeld would have to "take a seat next to the leader".

Mr Verges decried US treatment of Saddam Hussein since his capture and said he feared the former ruler could be killed before he had a chance to stand trial.

The United States declared Saddam a prisoner of war last month, meaning he has certain rights under the Geneva Convention on treatment of such detainees. But US officials have said they do not rule out the possibility that the United States might re-evaluate that status in the future.

Mr Verges has taken on tough cases before. Barbie, known as the "butcher of Lyon", was jailed for life in 1987 for crimes against humanity in Nazi-occupied France.

Carlos the Jackal, whose real name is Illich Ramirez Sanchez, is serving a life sentence in France for a string of deadly attacks in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s.

Charges against Saddam could cover his campaign against Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s, the use of chemical weapons on Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians, the crushing of Kurdish and Shia uprisings in 1991 and the oppression of minority groups in the south and north of the country. -Reuters