US forces had no role in Saddam Hussein?s hanging, but would have handled it differently, a US general said on Wednesday as Iraqi authorities questioned a guard over a video of officials taunting Saddam on the gallows. National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said a committee investigating who had illicitly filmed and leaked a video of the hanging was questioning one of the guards at the prison facility where Saddam was hanged at dawn on Saturday.

There were conflicting reports of whether Saddam?s two co-defendants, including his half-brother Barzan, would be hanged yesterday at dawn. Rubaie said the date had not been set. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour appealed to Iraq not to execute the two men.

As the White House said President George W. Bush had not seen the Saddam video, Major General William Caldwell urged the Iraqi government to reach out to disillusioned Sunni Arabs, who have warned that the execution and film are blows to the Shi?ite-led government?s efforts at national reconciliation. Caldwell said US forces, who had physical custody of Saddam for three years, left all security measures at Saddam?s hanging, including access to the execution chamber, to Iraqis. ?Had we been physically in charge at that point we would have done things differently,? he told a news conference. ?At this point the government of Iraq has the opportunity to take advantage of what has occurred and really reach out now in an attempt to bring more people back into the political process and bring the Sunnis back,? he said. In direct advice from the US military to Iraqi leaders, Caldwell said the country?s government and parliament ?will have to rise above past divisions?. ?This will entail difficult decisions... and hard compromises necessary for national reconciliation.?

Video strirs anger

Caldwell said there had been a lull in violence over the Eid al-Adha holiday, which started on Saturday, but US forces were braced for a possible violent backlash still to come.

Thousands of Saddam?s fellows Sunni Arabs have marched to vent anger at the execution. More mourners came to visit his grave in his village, Awja, on Wednesday, and other towns saw further demonstrations.

The unofficial video of the hanging, apparently filmed on a mobile phone, showed Shi?ite officials mocking Saddam just before he was hanged, inflaming sectarian passions in a country already on the brink of sectarian civil war.

Rubaie blamed the video on people trying to raise tension. ?Whoever leaked this video meant to harm national reconciliation and drive a wedge between Shi?ites and Sunnis,? said Rubaie, one of some 20 official witnesses at the hanging.

Sadiq al-Rikabi, an adviser to the prime minister, told Iraqiya state television that a number of guards at the facility had been taken in for questioning and investigators had identified a person suspected of filming the hanging. Prosecutor Munkith al-Faroon, heard appealing for order on the video, told Reuters on Tuesday that two senior officials had filmed the hanging, challenging government claims guards did it. The ti-ming of the execution, four days after an appeal failed and on the first day of Eid, shocked many, both in Iraq and in the rest of the Muslim world.

A senior US official told the New York Times Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was concerned that if Saddam was not hanged quickly he would somehow escape the noose. ?His concern was security, and that ... maybe there would be a mass kidnapping to bargain for Saddam Hussein?s release,? he said. ?He was concerned that he might somehow get free.?

Rubaie confirmed that Iraqi officials had been concerned Saddam might escape justice: ?The question is not ?Why the rush in the execution?? The question is ?Why the delay?? ? ?Some people were talking about the Americans, saying they might take him to one of these islands controlled by the United States and exile him there.?

Rubaie, Faroon and Sami al-Askari, a senior aide to Maliki, all said the date had not been set for the hanging of Barzan al -Tikriti, Saddam?s half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad al-Bander, a former chief judge, despite other officials telling media they would be executed yesterday at dawn. UN rights chief Arbour called for clemency. ?International law, as it currently stands, only allows the imposition of the death penalty as an exceptional measure within rigorous legal constraints,? she said.

At the United Nations in New York, a spokeswoman for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the UN leader was ?strongly behind? and ?fully endorses? Arbour?s statement.

Alastair MACDONALD Claudia PARSONS

ATTACKS

Two bombs kill 13 at petrol station in Baghdad

■ Two bombs exploded at a petrol station in Baghdad?s western Mansour district yesterday, killing 13 people and wounding 22, police and an Interior ministry source said.

The first blast was a roadside bomb that hit people lining up for fuel at the petrol station, police said. When rescue services arrived on the scene, a car bomb exploded. The Interior ministry source said both were car bombs. Mansour is an upscale neighbourhood with a mixed population of Shi?ites and Sunni Arabs. There has been a relative lull in major attacks and violence over the Eid al-Adha holiday, which ended on Wednesday. But US Major General William Caldwell warned on Wednesday that US and Iraqi forces were braced for a possible violent backlash after Saddam Hussein was hanged on Saturday and an illicitly filmed video of the hanging showed him being taunted by Shi?ite officials just before his death. The video has inflamed sectarian tensions in a country already on the brink of civil war. UN statistics say an average of more than 100 people a day are killed in bombings, mortar attacks and sectarian death squad killings.