Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Wednesday that he would prefer to tarry the executions of two aides of former leader Saddam Hussein.

"In my opinion we should wait on the executions because we should examine the situation first," Talabani said in a joint news conference with US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad in Iraq's northern city of Sulaimaniyah.

Talabani made the remarks one day after government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the government would carry out the executions of Saddam's half-brother and former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and the former chief judge of the Revolutionary Court Awad Hamed al-Bandar within days.

"The executions would be carried out within a few days. There is no definite date but it is going to be decided by the prime minister in a few days," Dabbagh told reporters.

Tikriti and Bandar, along with Saddam, were sentenced to death by hanging on Nov. 5, 2006 for their role in killing of 148 Shiite people in Dujail village, some 60 km north of Baghdad, in the 1980s.

Saddam was hanged on Dec. 30 last year, the first day of important Islamic festival Eid al-Adha (Islam's feast of sacrifice), sparking anger inside and outside Iraq especially after the hanging was secretly filmed with a mobile phone.

In the two-and-a-half minute film, Saddam was seen taunted by Shiite witnesses at the very last moments of his life, including one who shouted the name of a radical Shiite cleric -- "Muqtada,Muqtada, Muqtada."

(Xinhua News Agency January 11, 2007)