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Baghdad (AFP) Dec 5, 2010 Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini arrived in Baghdad on Sunday on the last stop of a Middle East tour to call for clemency against the death penalty for Saddam-era minister Tareq Aziz. Frattini was due to hold talks with Prime Minister-designate Nuri al-Maliki, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari and President Jalal Talabani, an Italian diplomat said. "His visit does not have a specific theme," the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It aims to promote bilateral economic cooperation and is an opportunity to discuss the situation of Christians in Iraq, which is a major concern for many Italians." A series of attacks against Iraqi Christians, notably an October 31 siege in a Baghdad cathedral that left 44 worshippers and two priests dead, has sparked an international outcry. Frattini was also to call for a "gesture of clemency" against the death sentence handed down against Tareq Aziz, who was foreign minister and then deputy prime minister during the rule of now-executed dictator Saddam Hussein, Frattini's spokesman said before the trip. "Frattini will ask for a gesture of clemency for Tareq Aziz" during his visit, Maurizio Massari told reporters. The Italian diplomat said that if the issue was raised on Sunday, it would probably be in talks with Maliki and Talabani. Talabani has said that he will never sign Aziz's execution order, in keeping with his stance against capital punishment. Aziz, 74, was handed the death penalty on October 26 for the suppression of Shiite religious parties in the 1980s. Iraq's supreme criminal court found the long-time international face of Saddam's regime guilty of "deliberate murder and crimes against humanity", sentencing him to death. In poor health and among Saddam's few surviving top cohorts, Aziz has been in prison since surrendering in April 2003, shortly after the capture of Baghdad in the US-led invasion.
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