Saddam Hussein was being cross-examined for the first time in court Wednesday by judges and prosecutors in a new session of his trial for the killings of Shiites in the 1980s.

Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein speaks at his trial in Baghdad in this March 1, 2006, file photo. The Iraq tribunal on Tuesday, April 4, 2006, announced new criminal charges against Hussein and six others in a 1980s crackdown against the Kurds, including the gassing of thousands of civilians in the village of Halabja. Investigative judge Raid Juhi said the charges against Saddam and the others had been filed with another judge, who will review the evidence and order a trial date. The move is tantamount to an indictment under the Iraqi legal system. [AP\file]

Saddam was the sole defendant in the courtroom as Wednesday's session opened. His seven co-defendants testified one by one in earlier sessions over their role in a crackdown against Shiites in the town of Dujail in 1982.

The new session came a day after prosecutors indicted Saddam on separate charges of genocide, accusing him of trying to exterminate Kurds in a 1980s campaign that killed an estimated 100,000 people. The charges will be dealt with in a separate trial.

Saddam had been due to testify and be questioned in the last session of the Dujail trial, on March 15.

But he launched into a long speech calling on Iraqis to stop secular violence and unite to fight American troops. After demanding that Saddam stop making political speeches, Chief Judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman closed most of the session to the public to allow Saddam to finish talking.

Wednesday's cross-examination was the first opportunity in the six-month-old trial for judges and prosecutors to directly question Saddam over allegations he directed the crackdown against Dujail residents in which 140 Shiites were killed and hundreds were imprisoned, some of them undergoing torture.

Saddam has acknowledged ordering the trial in which the 140 Shiites were sentenced to death but has maintained his actions were legal because they were in response to a 1982 assassination attempt against him in the town.

In court Wednesday, Saddam demanded an international body examine signatures alleged to be his on documents the prosecution has presented concerning the crackdown, including an order approving the death sentences. Some of Saddam's co-defendants have insisted that signatures said to be theirs are forged.

"You should resort to an impartial, international body" and not a body "that kills thousands people on the streets and tortures them ... the Interior Ministry," Saddam told Abdel-Rahman, referring to the now-Shiite-controlled ministry, which some Iraqis accuse of backing Shiite militias that have assassinated Sunni Arabs.

"Don't venture into political matters," Abdel-Rahman replied.

"If you are scared of the Interior minister, he doesn't scare my dog," Saddam retorted.

Saddam and the seven former members of his regime face possible execution by hanging if they are convicted in connection with the crackdown launched in Dujail following a July 8, 1982 shooting attack on Saddam's motorcade in the town.