US rejects pullout timetable

In this image taken from a video provided by the Iraqi Special Tribunal Monday, shows former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein during questioning by magistrates at an unknown location and date. PHOTO: AFP

The video was released Monday amid heightened tensions between the country's once-oppressed Shia majority and the disempowered Sunni Arab minority, and on the same day that a Sunni group accused the government of ethnic cleansing.

"I have given the approval to release the tape," Judge Raed al-Juhi, a member of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, said without elaborating.

CNN television showed brief footage of Juhi questioning a bearded Saddam with longish black hair who was wearing a tieless white shirt and a black vest, reportedly over the 1982 killing of 143 residents of Dujail, a Shia village northeast of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, The White House on Monday rejected calls for setting a precise timetable for a US withdrawal from Iraq, even as a new poll showed almost six in 10 Americans want at least a partial pullout of US forces.

"We will leave when we complete the mission," spokesman Scott McClellan said a day after a representative in US President George W. Bush's Republican party said he would push legislation fixing a firm schedule for such a withdrawal.

"We are not going to stay a day longer than what is necessary. But what we're working to achieve in Iraq is vital to peace and security for generations to come," said McClellan.