WASHINGTON, June 28: The United States will hand over former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to the new interim government within days, a top US military spokesman said on Monday.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for US forces in Iraq, told Fox News Channel that Saddam would not remain in US custody for much longer. "I think we're talking days, not weeks," Kimmitt said from Baghdad.

"Clearly, we have been very forward on this notion. The president has said that after sovereignty, if the nation of Iraq has the papers for his indictment, then we will certainly hand over legal custody."

Kimmitt also said that the US Army had not definitively identified a hostage shown in a video, and who has been threatened with beheading, as missing Marine Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun.

The general said military authorities believed it was Hassoun, a translator, "but we can't be 100 percent certain. We do know that one of our marines did take off. "Those documents that we're seeing on the television are his documents.

There is still some minor uncertainty about whether the person in those pictures is also the person we are seeing blindfolded. "We are certainly operating under the working assumption that that is the young corporal." Hassoun went missing on June 21 near Fallujah. -AFP