IRAQI PRESIDENT SAYS HE SIGNED PETITION AGAINST DEATH PENALTY

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said that while he had once signed an international petition against the death penalty, his signature was not needed to carry out the death sentence against Saddam Hussein.
"I am among the people who signed the petition against the death penalty," he told a conference at the Institute for the Arab World in Paris. He did not specify which petition he was referring to.
The president's office must ratify the death sentence handed down against Saddam on November 5, but Talabani insisted that his personal signature was not necessary.
"The court does not need the signature of the Iraqi president," he told the conference in Arabic. "The Iraqi judiciary is independent."