Speaking in court, at his trial for the genocide of between 50,000 and 180,000 people, the former dictator defended his policy of targeting Kurdish areas.

"My message to the Iraqi people is that they should not suffer from the guilt that they killed Kurds," Saddam said.

He said Kurds enjoyed rights under his regime and that he only clamped down on insurgents among them.

The ousted president said before Iraq fought in the 2003 war against the United States: "I formed two brigades in the republican guards composed completely of Kurds. This is a proof that the Iraqi government then did not discriminate against Kurds."

He also accused Kurdish prosecution witnesses appearing before the court of stirring sectarianism and insisted he treated loyal Iraqi Kurds fairly.

He said: "All the witnesses said in the courtroom that they were oppressed because they were Kurds.

"They're trying to create strife between the people of Iraq. They're trying to create division between Kurds and Arabs and this is what I want the people of Iraq to know."

The former leader's second trial resumed today after a break of nearly three weeks.

Saddam and six co-defendants may face the death penalty if found guilty of the killings of tens of thousands of Kurds during the Anfal campaign, a massive military assault in northern Iraq in the 80s.

Prosecutors allege that, during the offensive, the regime herded hundreds of thousands of Kurds into prison camps and killed thousands more with chemical weaponry.

In the morning session, the court heard from a 56-year-old Kurdish-American woman, who told of seeing people sickened and dying during an alleged chemical attack carried out by Saddam's forces.

Katreen Elias Mikhail, a former militia fighter, said four planes unleashed a wave of bombs on the town of Qalizewa on the evening of June 5 1987.

"I smelled something dirty and strange," she told the court.

Ms Mikhail said she was stranded in an underground shelter with her friend Umm Ali and dozens of other people.

"Then, I heard comrade Abu Elias shout, 'Is there a doctor here?'

"People were falling to the ground. They vomited and their eyes were blinded. We couldn't see anything."

Sitting in the witness stand, she said that her friend Nashme told her "the whole town was hit with chemical weapons".

Ms Mikhail later demanded compensation from foreign companies she said supplied the regime with chemicals allegedly used to gas Kurdish rebels.

During the proceedings, a defiant Saddam clutched the Qur'an and insisted that the judge address him as the "president of Iraq".

The trial, which opened on August 21, is likely to take months.

The court has heard grim testimony from Kurdish witnesses who told of entire families killed in chemical weapons attacks against their villages.

They said survivors plunged their faces into milk to end the pain from the blinding gas or fled into the hills on mules as military helicopters fired on them.

The 1987-88 Anfal campaign claimed the lives of 50,000-180,000 Kurds. It aimed to crush independence-minded Kurdish militias and clear all Kurds from the northern region along the border with Iran. Saddam accused the Kurds of helping Iran in its war with Iraq.

The chief judge, Abdullah al-Amiri, adjourned the trial just two days after it opened and ordered it be resumed on September 11 to consider defence appeals over the legitimacy of the tribunal. Late yesterday, about 300 demonstrators in northern Iraq demanded a swift trial for Saddam and also called for trials for Kurdish military commanders who they said had worked with Saddam during the campaign.

A verdict is due on October 16 in Saddam's first trial, which has lasted nine months, in which he is accused over the killings of 148 Shias in a crackdown on the town of Dujail in the 80s. In that case as well, he and seven other co-defendants could face the death penalty.