Hussein gave orders by code, official says

"What we know is the insurgency inside Iraq is a little bit complicated," said Khudair Abbas, who met with President Bush and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Monday to talk about rebuilding Iraq's struggling health system.

Abbas said the pattern of violence that occurred after statements attributed to Hussein were broadcast led many inside Iraq to believe that he was using an old method of indirectly authorizing attacks.

"It was some kind of code," Abbas said. Still, Abbas said that many of the attacks on US forces are not launched by fighters loyal to Hussein, but rather by Iraqis who are unhappy with the US-led occupation, or by a loosely connected group of foreigners who slip across the border from other Arab countries.

The health minister also said he expects doctors who maimed citizens in the name of the regime will be tried alongside Hussein and other top Ba'ath Party members in a war crimes tribunal.

Hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of Iraqis who refused to join the military had their ears cut off or were "marked" on their foreheads by doctors who were paid by the regime, Abbas said.

"I have met with hundreds of those mutilated Iraqis," he said. "One of them, when he faced me, he started to cry and cry. He has been housebound . . . because he cannot face his family members, he cannot face his neighbors. . . . He cannot tolerate to walk the streets."

Abbas said investigators would interrogate the doctors who are accused of such abuses "in a fair way" to find out whether they performed the work willingly or were forced into the grim task.

He said he already knew the names of some of the doctors, and that at least one had already fled Iraq to another Arab country.

"A doctor has to work according to a certain code of ethics," he said. "I think we should differentiate between who is the doctor and who is the butcher."

Abbas, a surgeon who practiced in Britain, where he lived in exile, for over two decades, called Hussein a "psychopath."

"Saddam's a person who is extremely sick," he said. "He gets too much pleasure on the pains of others."

Farah Stockman can be reached at fstockman@globe.com.