IRAQ: File of Saddam Hussein who has bid family farewell, hanging date unclear.

Saddam Hussein bade two half brothers farewell on Thursday (December 28) in a rare prison meeting as he awaits execution, a lawyer said, but U.S. and Iraqi officials gave conflicting accounts of whether he would hang within days. A senior Bush administration official said the ousted president could go to the gallows as soon as Saturday (December 30). But Iraqi officials backed away from suggestions they would definitely hang him within a month and a cabinet minister told Reuters a week-long religious holiday would stall any execution. "He was in very high spirits and clearly readying himself," Badie Aref, a defence lawyer, told Reuters after the 69-year-old former leader met half-brothers Watban and Sabawi, who are also both held at the U.S. army's Camp Cropper near Baghdad airport. The novelty of the U.S.-sponsored process by which Saddam and his third half-brother Barzan, along with another senior member of the Baath party, were condemned on November 5 has left considerable room for wrangling over the timing of any execution among rival factions and between Washington and Baghdad. Battling to stave off all-out sectarian civil war, Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had said he wanted Saddam hanged this year for the killings, torture and other crimes against the Shi'ite population of the town of Dujail. But some of Saddam's fellow Sunnis have warned this could reinforce their community's alienation and many ethnic Kurds want Saddam first convicted of genocide against them. Iraq's Saddam-era penal code bars executions on religious holidays. Eid al-Adha, coinciding with the haj pilgrimage to Mecca, runs from Friday until work resumes on Jan. 7. Nonetheless, the U.S. official in the United States said: "I've heard that it's going to be a couple more days, probably." A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad confirmed that Saddam was still being held at a U.S.-run prison but said any change in that status could be kept secret for security reasons. CBS News reported a U.S. military officer said Saddam would be turned over to the Iraqis within the next 36 hours. Americans are concerned about Iraqi treatment of prisoners and are likely to keep a tight control of the process before the execution to avoid the public spectacle some Iraqis want to see. .

ITN Source | December 29, 2006

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