Saddam Hussein's chief attorney denied yesterday that the ousted leader had confessed to ordering executions and waging a campaign against Kurds in which thousands of people are said to have been killed.

"There was no confession by the president and all the investigations in this case do not implicate him at all," Khalil Dulaimi said in a statement sent to Reuters.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani told state television on Tuesday that an investigator who questioned Saddam told him he had extracted important confessions from him and that the ousted leader had signed them.

But Talabani did not say if

Saddam had actually admitted to committing any crimes or merely acknowledged that he was head of state and commander in chief of the army at the time of various military operations.

Dulaimi last saw Saddam on Monday, only days after the government said the former leader's trial on a single charge of mass killings in reprisal for a 1982 assassination attempt would begin on October 19.

Meanwhile, the long wait for the start of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's trial has increased instability in the country, Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in an interview published yesterday.