Rice Scolds Holdouts on Iraq Trial

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sharply criticized other nations Tuesday for failing to provide support for the trial of Saddam Hussein, saying that the world community’s “effective boycott of Saddam’s trial is only harming the Iraqi people.”

Speaking at a time when the trial has suffered setbacks, Rice complained that other countries had “barely done anything” to aid the prosecution of the former Iraqi dictator.

“All who express their devotion to human rights and the rule of law have a special obligation to help the Iraqis bring to justice one of the world’s most murderous tyrants,” Rice said in a speech at a conservative think tank here.

U.S. officials have expressed disappointment that other countries and international organizations such as the United Nations have not offered more technical help and moral support for the trial. But Rice’s words carried a new, more forceful tone aimed, aides said, at persuading more outsiders to join the effort.

U.S. officials have differed with many other governments almost from the outset of the war on how to conduct trials of Hussein and top aides. The U.S. and its Iraqi allies wanted the trials to be overseen by national authorities in Iraq, whereas officials with the U.N. and from many other countries favored hybrid proceedings with a larger international component.

Officials of other governments, including many in Europe, have said they would avoid a proceeding they feared could be seen as an American-run show trial. They also have been put off by the possible death penalty, which is legal in Iraq and the United States but banned in much of the world.

As a result, other countries have declined to send legal advisors, investigators or forensic specialists, despite pleas from Iraqi officials. Such decisions not only have deprived attorneys and investigators of resources but cost the trial the international legitimacy sought by the U.S., which has spent more than $100 million on the undertaking.

A U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Rice has been hoping to find a way “to energize others to get involved.” The televised trial is the most important exercise in human rights going on anywhere in the world at the moment, the official said, as well as “the most popular show in Iraq.... The world is watching.”

The official argued that the proceeding could no longer be called a show trial, since it had had the support of a succession of Iraqi governments, including the administration put in office by January’s election.

In recent weeks, the Hussein trial has been jolted by the slayings of two defense lawyers, and questions have arisen about whether Hussein is manipulating the event to play on Iraqis’ sympathies.

But the U.S. official insisted that testimony is unfolding well from the prosecution’s standpoint and that Rice’s words were not spurred by anxiety in Washington about the outcome.

An official with the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, which had argued for a hybrid Iraqi-international trial, contended that the White House had only itself to blame for other countries’ unwillingness to take part.

“The Bush administration rebuffed efforts to engage,” said Joe Stork, director of the organization’s Middle East and North Africa program. “They had a very strong aversion to anything that smacked of international justice.”

Rice’s comments were tucked into a speech aimed at praising other countries for taking what she said was a growing role in the rebuilding of Iraq. In an appearance at the Heritage Foundation, Rice said members of the American-led coalition were still providing important military forces as well as security training and financial support.

Iraq’s Arab neighbors provide backing for the democratic government, she added, and hailed a recent Arab League meeting in Cairo that urged Iraq’s Sunni Muslim Arab minority to renounce violence and take part in Thursday’s parliamentary vote.

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Times staff writer Richard Boudreaux in Baghdad contributed to this report.