Fresh evidence of atrocities from the Saddam era has emerged at a mass grave near Hatra, in northern Iraq, which could help convict the captured dictator of crimes against humanity.
Investigators, concluding their first scientific exhumation of a mass grave, this week showed reporters nine trenches in a dry riverbed containing at least 300 bodies, and possibly thousands, including unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys.
"It is my personal opinion that this is a killing field," said Greg Kehoe, a US lawyer appointed by the White House to work with the Iraqi Special Tribunal set up to try Saddam.
"I've been doing grave sites for a long time, but I've never seen anything like this, women and children executed for no apparent reason," added Kehoe, who spent five years in the Balkans.
The victims are believed to be Kurds killed in 1987-88.
Saddam, 67, who is expected to face trial for crimes including genocide next year, underwent a hernia operation at a US run hospital in Baghdad two weeks ago and has made a full recovery, a US military official said on Wednesday.
Iraq's interim government vowed on Wednesday to disarm insurgents bent on derailing January elections and drive foreign militants from Falluja, where the latest clashes with US. forces killed eight people.
"No Iraqi will be allowed to have heavy weapons," Defence Minister Hazim Shaalan told the Saudi Okaz newspaper.
A cash-for-weapons programme kicked off in the Baghdad slums of Sadr City this week after a radical Shi'ite militia promised to disarm under a plan to end fighting with US forces there.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who visited Baghdad this week, gave a cautious verdict on the scheme.
"It is true that some elements are turning in some weapons," he said in Bucharest. "One hopes that over time all of them will. But until that happens, why, we have to just be hopeful."
Shaalan said insurgents must disarm in all Iraqi towns and cities, including Falluja, a hotbed of Sunni Muslim insurgency.
"Terrorists are controlling a large part of Falluja and we will get them sooner or later. There are non-Iraqis among them, they are Arabs," the paper quoted him as saying.
US troops called in air strikes on one neighbourhood of the rebel-held city during fighting on Tuesday evening. A doctor reported eight dead from the violence, which coincided with peace talks aimed at deploying Iraqi security forces in Falluja.
"We are very close to reaching a final settlement. Our main condition is that the US army does not enter Falluja," the city's negotiator Khaled al-Jumaili said today.
Repeated US air raids have hit the city in recent weeks, most of them aimed at buildings the military says are used by foreign militants loyal to Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
"We hope the strikes can be temporarily suspended to...give us a chance to conclude negotiations and then the National Guard can enter Falluja," Shaalan said.
Previous truce deals have failed to calm Falluja.