The Bush administration is examining the various legal options available in anticipation of the fall of the regime in Baghdad.

"The administration is in touch with former government officials and scholars and they are working on war crime issues," said one of the former officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"There is a lot of debate going on right now in the administration on how to do this."

Meanwhile, officials in the departments of State and Justice recently brought together 32 Iraqi lawyers to discuss the issue of war crimes and a post-Saddam Iraqi regime, said Justice Department spokesman Brian Sierra.

According to The New York Times, the Bush administration recently indicated that at least six Iraqi leaders, including Saddam -- who could be accused as war criminals for ordering massacres, torture and chemical attacks -- will be prosecuted if they are taken alive.

A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Iraqis who violated the Geneva Conventions by pretending to surrender to ambush coalition troops, posing as civilians or using hospitals for cover could be tried in US courts.

"We have options. We have different kinds of prosecutions. For instance, in the US we have military courts, we have federal district courts that have certain jurisdiction," the official said.

For crimes committed by Iraqi soldiers against civilians an appropriate mechanism will be determined after the war, the official said.

As for Iraq's leaders, the administration is discussing the possibility of organizing a prosecution under the auspices of the United Nations similar to tribunals set up to judge war crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. However, it appears unlikely President George W. Bush will accept such a scenario, as he has rejected the authority of the UN-sponsored International Criminal Court.

"The Americans don't want to do a UN tribunal because it will become politicized, it will take too long," said Paul Williams, professor of international law at American University and specialist in war crimes jurisdiction.

"It will be much preferable to have an Iraqi process, with some type of regional participation, so we will have some Iraqi judges, somes Egyptian judges, maybe a Bahraini judge.

"It will be the most effective."

Iraqi legal experts have told Washington they want Saddam and others from his regime judged in Iraq.

"We do not want a repetition of the Milosevic lawsuit which will be used as a podium for propaganda means," said Mohammed Al-Jabiri, a former Iraqi diplomat exiled in Australia.

One problem with an Iraqi process would be finding judges who were not loyal to Saddam.

"It will make much more sense to have a mixed regional tribunal. You need to have Kurds and Iraqis and Shiites in such a court. You need to have the victims as part of the tribunal," Williams said.

But a Nuremburg-type tribunal also should be excluded, said Williams, because "it would be perceived as too militaristic and too American of a tribunal in Arab public opinion."

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