'Aziz will not testify against Saddam'

"Aziz told me that he will not take the witness stand against Saddam," Badi Aref Izzat told CNN Thursday in a telephone interview from Baghdad.

The lawyer said he witnessed Aziz's first official interrogation on Tuesday at a US base near Baghdad airport.

He said Aziz told him "he is in good health and spirits ... despite his more than two year detention," but that he was "always asking about his family," whom he has not seen since his arrest in April 2003.

Izzat said Aziz, the white-haired, bespectacled spokesman of Saddam, and other senior aides to the fallen dictator were being housed in separate cells, under US guard, but that they were allowed to meet three hours a day.

On Aziz awaiting trial by an Iraqi special tribunal, the lawyer said that "any interrogation or future trial, if there is any evidence against Mr. Aziz, should be conducted on an independent soil, such as Holland or Sweden."