Former Iraq envoy 'condemns' Saddam

Mohammed al-Douri says he served the Iraqi people

Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations before the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime has said the missing leader should be brought to justice.

Mohammed al-Douri, in an interview with BBC World, added that the regime deserved to have been toppled by the Iraqi people, not the US-led "colonialist" forces.

Mr Douri, who represented the Iraqi Government until mid-April, said he believed the Iraqi people were glad the ousted president had gone but were angry at the continuing occupation.

On 1 May, US President George W Bush declared that the war, which had started on 20 March, was effectively over.

Graves regret

But US and UK troops are still in the country and Saddam Hussein and many of his regime's leaders have not been captured.

Mr Douri said: "The regime is over and now we have to tackle another problem, the American and British presence in Iraq as a colonialist power.

"We didn't ask you to come. I would have preferred that the Iraqi people did that."

I would prefer to believe that there is some mass destruction weapons so we can be convinced at least as Iraqi citizens that these WMD do exist

Mohammed al-Douri

When he was questioned about the mass graves of hundreds of executed Iraqis that have been uncovered since the fall of Saddam Hussein, Mr Douri said: "Those are Iraqi people, my brothers, so I regret that and I hope that all people responsible for these graves have to be presented to trial, to judgment and to be judged by Iraqi people, not by British or American."

Asked if that included Saddam Hussein, he replied: "Everybody. Iraqi, British, American - anybody in the world killing any person I think has to be prosecuted before the courts of their country."

BBC Hardtalk interviewer Tim Sebastian asked if Mr Douri was now prepared to condemn the regime that he served.

"I condemn always any kind of killing in Iraq or outside Iraq," he replied.

But the former ambassador said he was never ashamed of his role as he believed he was representing the country and people of Iraq and not the government.

"I defended my people under sanctions for 12 years which were killing more than 1.5 million people and for that I am proud that I am struggling against those two countries occupying my country," he said.

Weapons proof

During his time at the United Nations, Mr Douri repeatedly said his country no longer had weapons of mass destruction.

He told the BBC that he had little new information because he was "a lawyer not a scientist".

But he assumed his government was not lying as the US and Britain had yet to present evidence of the weapons.

Mass graves have been unearthed in Iraq

Mr Douri also told the BBC that right up until the last moment, Saddam Hussein's government did not believe the US-led forces would invade Iraq.

He said he advised Baghdad the threat of war was serious and still cannot explain why they refused to accept it.

Mr Douri was the first Iraqi official to concede publicly the fall of the Iraqi government.

He left New York on 11 April for Syria before travelling to the United Arab Emirates.

Mr Douri once said he hoped to return to Baghdad to teach law but his high profile as a representative of the ousted government may make this impossible.