Blair opposes death penalty for Saddam

By BETH GARDINER

The Associated Press

LONDON -- Prime Minister Tony Blair said Monday he opposed the death penalty for Saddam Hussein even though the deposed Iraqi leader's trial had reminded the world of his brutality.

Asked about Saddam's sentence at his monthly news 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 referred repeatedly to Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett's comments on the verdict. She said that while Britain opposed capital punishment, Saddam's sentence was a matter for Iraq's government.

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.

On another issue, Blair said Britain would be willing to negotiate with a Hamas-led Palestinian government if it meets international demands that it renounce violence and recognize Israel.

Moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and negotiators from the Islamic militant Hamas have reached agreement in principle on forming a government of independent experts, a Hamas Cabinet minister said Monday. Blair said Britain would work with such a government if it met the demands the Quartet of would-be peacemakers has been making for months.

"You can't negotiate a two-state solution, Israel and Palestine, if one part of the people you're negotiating with is saying 'We don't want Israel to exist,"' Blair said at his monthly news conference.

A weeklong Israeli offensive in northern Gaza, aimed at halting Palestinian rocket fire on Israeli communities near the coastal strip, has killed at least 48 Palestinians, most of them militants.

Blair said "what is happening in Palestine at the moment, particularly in Gaza, is just terrible, the people are living there in a situation of worsening poverty, violence, different militias and gangs."

A Hamas delegation visited Britain last week, but refused to say whether it had met with British officials. The Foreign Office says it has no contact with Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and the European Union.