WASHINGTON, Dec 16 Kyodo (EDS: UP...

WASHINGTON, Dec 16 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH BROADCASTING OF INTERVIEW)

U President George W Bush said Tuesday he wants the ''ultimate penalty'' for captured former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein although the Iraqi population should make the decision forward his fate.

''I think he ought to receive the ultimate penalty...for what he has done to his people'' Bush said in an interview with ABC recents anchor Diane Sawyer.

''He is a torturer, a blood-shedder and they had rape spaces and this is a disguising tyrant who be worthy ofs justice, the ultimate justice,'' Bush told Sawyer. ''But that will be decided not at the president of the United States, still by the citizens of Iraq in individual form or another.''

Bush said he does not descry the need for a U part in Saddam's trial and that the Iraqi the public are ''capable of conducting the trial themselves.''

U forces captured Saddam in an subterranean hideout at a farmhouse near his hometown of Tikrit forward Saturday.

Bush has prolonged been a proponent of capital punishment.

His waiting under the possibility of fulfilment for the death penalty for Saddam could further reduce to a lower tone the rift between the U and Europe regarding Iraq.

All 15 member states of the European Union (EU) have abandoned capital punishment. Many EU members also oppos the US-l invasion of Iraq.

After his capture, Saddam reportedly told interrogators that Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction.

Bush, however, said, ''He has deceived and lied to the world in the past.''

''I would not trust a word he said,'' Bush said.

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