"Forgive and shake hands," Saddam urges Iraqis

BAGHDAD, Nov 7 (Reuters) Saddam Hussein, back in court two days after being sentenced to hang for crimes against humanity, urged Iraqis today to seek reconciliation.

Invoking Prophet Mohammad and Jesus, Saddam told a court trying him for genocide against Kurds: ''I call on all Iraqis, Arabs and Kurds, to forgive, reconcile and shake hands.'' Saddam met his death sentence in the first trial on Sunday with cries of ''God is Greatest!'' and ''Down with the invaders!''.

Yesterday he was unusually subdued during a session in which he quietly listened to witnesses recount how they were detained, shot or gassed by Iraqi soldiers in the late 1980s.

Saddam and six former commanders face charges of genocide for their roles in the 1988 Anfal (Spoils of War) military campaign against ethnic Kurds. Prosecutors say up to 180,000 Kurds were killed, many of them by gas attacks.

The ousted president's fate after the earlier trial is now in the hands of an appellate chamber. No execution is likely before next year.

He was found guilty of crimes against humanity for ordering hundreds of Shi'ites killed or tortured in the town of Dujail after an assassination attempt in 1982.

The ruling sparked condemnation among Sunni Arabs, who say the U S-backed court is an instrument of political revenge for Shi'ites and Kurds, persecuted under Saddam's Sunni government and now in power.

The verdict has highlighted deep divisions between Iraq's communities that threaten to push the country into civil war.

''VICTOR'S JUSTICE'' On Sunday, Saddam refused to stand up when the judge began reading his verdict. When a guard was ordered to make him get to his feet, Saddam shouted: ''Don't twist my hand, you fool!'' When he was summoned by the judge today, Saddam, dressed in a black suit and tieless shirt and smiling faintly, filed into the marbled courtroom, once a palatial office of his Baath party, and made his way quietly to his seat.

Defence attorneys, who dismissed Saddam's death sentence as ''victor's justice'' and have criticised the U.S.-backed court as illegitimate, continued their month-old boycott in protest against the government's decision to sack the previous judge.

Court-appointed lawyers sat in.

At one point, the fallen strongman challenged a witness who took his shirt off to show what he said were scars suffered after being shot on Saddam's orders.

''So these people in the cage or some of them carried out the acts directly?'' Saddam politely addressed the judge.

''When he says there are two officers, what do they look like? Does this bring us to the truth?'' Witness Qahar Khalil Mohammad told the court he and other villagers had surrendered to Iraqi soldiers after being promised that Saddam had issued an amnesty. Instead, they were lined up at the bottom of a hill and soldiers opened fire.

''When they fired in our direction we all fell to the ground,'' he said. ''I saw my father and two brothers had been killed as well as 18 of my other relatives.'' He was wounded but managed to survive, he said.

Reuters AKJ DB2047