Iraq could execute former leader Saddam Hussein after trying him, the director of the country's war crimes tribunal system said yesterday.

　　Salem Chalabi, who is in charge of setting up a special tribunal to try members of the ousted regime, said that once the Iraqi government gains sovereignty on June 30, it will have the power to end US occupation chief L. Paul Bremer's suspension of the death penalty in Iraq.

　　"The Iraqi government has to affirmatively take that step to lift the suspension," Chalabi said. "If the suspension imposed by Ambassador Bremer is lifted then there is the possibility of the death penalty being imposed" on those convicted of murder or rape.

　　Chalabi said tribunal officials were negotiating with the coalition forces about taking custody of Saddam and detained members of his regime after the handover of power. He said the prisoners would probably be transferred to Iraqi custody relatively soon after the transition.

　　He said it could be as long as a year before trials can begin. Investigations must be launched first and charges filed, he said.

　　Meanwhile, violence in war-torn country continued yesterday as a roadside bomb exploded along a highway leading to Baghdad's airport, killing two Iraqi soldiers and wounding 11 others as Iraq's interim prime minister reorganized the country's security forces to combat terrorism.

　　US forces clashed with insurgents in Samarra for a third straight day. Iraqi police and hospital officials said 10 Iraqis had been killed and 12 wounded. US 1st Infantry Division spokesman Maj Neal O'Brien said US helicopters killed at least four insurgents there yesterday.

　　Elsewhere, the US military said an American Marine was killed in action on Saturday in Anbar province, which includes Ramadi and Fallujah. A mortar round also injured six police officers and four Iraqis in a separate attack yesterday near the Iraqi central bank in the heart of Baghdad.

　　In southern Iraq, oil flowed to a port yesterday after crews completed key repairs on a pipeline sabotaged last week by insurgents, an official of the state-run Southern Oil Company said. It was unclear whether exports had yet resumed.

　　American soldiers accompanying the Iraqis on the dicey airport road said the attackers waited for the Americans to pass and then set off the blast as Iraqi forces drove by.

　　American troops took the Iraqi wounded to a US aid station for treatment. As they waited for news on the wounded, Iraqi soldiers wept and US comrades hugged them.

　　"The hardcore terrorists don't care who they kill," said Lieutenant Colonel Tim Ryan, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment.

　　Insurgents have hammered Iraqi police and civil defense troops to undermine confidence in the interim government before the June 30 handover of power.

　　Faced with the mounting violence, interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi appealed for international help for his beleaguered forces and said that the government was considering "emergency law" in certain, unspecified regions to bring the situation under control.

　　Such measures could apply to the restive Sunni stronghold of Fallujah, where an American airstrike on Saturday hit a house that US officials said was a suspected safehouse of Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's network. At least 16 people were killed in the strike.

　　(The Associated Press)