BAGHDAD, Aug 28: Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said in remarks on Sunday that he would not sign a death sentence against his ousted predecessor Saddam Hussein even if it costs him his job.

“Once his (Saddam’s) interrogation is over, he will go before a tribunal,” Mr Talabani told Dubai-based Al Arabiya news channel in an interview.

Should a death sentence be issued against the former president, “I will not sign it’, he said.

“I am a man of principles. I cannot forgo my principles for the sake of my post. If there is a clash between the post and the principles, I will give up the post and keep the principles,” Mr Talabani said in a snippet aired in advance of the full interview.

Mr Talabani said in May that he would not sign a death sentence against Saddam, whose trial on charges of crimes against humanity during his rule over Iraq is expected to come up within the next two months.

The Iraqi president, a vocal opponent of capital punishment, refused earlier this month to sign the first death sentences passed in Iraq since Saddam’s ouster in April 2003, delegating his deputy to sign the relevant decree.

Human rights groups believe that the executions could set a precedent for sentencing when the high-profile trials of former government figures, including Saddam, begin. Saddam is currently in US custody and held near Baghdad airport.

The Iraqi Special Tribunal filed charges against Saddam in late July over the 1982 killing of 143 residents of the village of Dujail, northeast of Baghdad, where he had been the target of a failed assassination bid.—AFP