Official calls for Hussein's execution

KUWAIT CITY -- Kuwait's information minister slammed Saddam Hussein for defending Iraq's 1990 invasion of the neighboring Persian Gulf country during his court appearance in Baghdad yesterday and said the former Iraqi leader should be executed.

''The criminal still believes he is the president of Iraq," Mohammed Abul-Hassan said in Kuwait after watching the televised images of Hussein appearing in an Iraqi court. ''Just imagine if he was still ruling Iraq."

Hussein is facing seven broad charges, including the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which was occupied by Iraqi forces for seven months until being liberated by a US-led coalition in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. About 400 people, mostly Kuwaitis, were killed during the occupation and 600 people remain missing.

In his first public appearance since he was captured by US forces in December, Hussein defended the invasion of Kuwait as being ''for the Iraqi people."

''How could Saddam be tried over a Kuwait that said it will reduce Iraqi women to 10 dinar prostitutes?" Hussein asked the presiding judge, adding that he ''defended Iraq's honor and revived its historical rights over those dogs."

The description of Kuwaitis as ''dogs" led to an admonishment from the judge for using such language in court. Dogs are considered unclean by many Muslims.

Abul-Hassan, the Kuwaiti official, reacted angrily to Hussein's comments about Kuwait, adding that his punishment should ''certainly be execution."

At the official Kuwait News Agency, editor Tarek Bou Haimad said that nothing would ease the pain caused by Hussein's invasion of Kuwait except by ''seeing him hanging from the gallows, preferably after a fair trial."