Iraq said today it will put President Bush on trial Oct. 15 for ``crimes against the peoples of the world.'' Iraq first announced its plan to put Bush on trial on Sept. 12, shortly after Western officials suggested Iraqi President Saddam Hussein be tried for crimes against humanity for the use of chemical weapons in 1988 against Iraq's minority Kurdish population. Baghdad accuses Bush of planning a war against Iraq, attempting genocide by sponsoring U.N. sanctions on Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait, and committing aggression against Panama and Grenada, according to Hamid Al-Rawi, chairman of Iraq's bar association and head of a panel preparing for the trial. ``Bush has committed many crimes since he took office as president of the United States and also before that when he was vice president,'' the English language Baghdad Observer quoted Al-Rawi as saying in today's editions. He was quoted as saying the United States, which has sent more than 150,000 troops to the Persian Gulf to counter Iraq, had committed ``a crime against peace, punishable by international law.'' Al-Rawi said the trial would be an ``international process'' with witnesses from other countries and Arab and non-Arab jurists. It would be conducted on the same basis as the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals following World War II, he said. Other accusations against Bush include the enforcement by the United States ``of an economic blockade against the people of Iraq with the aim of starving children, women and elderly to death, and also preventing food, medicine and baby milk from reaching the country in violation of the the U.N. charter.'' ``This is a crime punishable by international conventions which consider this an act of genocide,'' Al-Rawi was quoted as saying. AlRawi did not say what the punishment might be if Bush is convicted during the three-day trial.
