Baghdad: Iraq's prime minister said on Sunday there were no legal grounds for blocking the execution of ´Chemical Ali' Al Majid and two others sentenced to hang for crimes against Iraqi Kurds, despite demands by leading politicians to spare one of the three from the gallows.

Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki also criticised the United States for purportedly refusing to hand over the three for execution, which should have taken place more than a month ago.

Al Majid, former defense minister Sultan Hashim Al Tai and Hussain Rashid Mohammad, a former deputy director of operations for the Iraqi armed forces, were convicted last June of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced to hang for the crackdown that killed up to 180,000 Kurdish civilians and guerrillas two decades ago.

An appeals court upheld the verdict in September and under Iraqi law the sentences should have been carried out within a month.

But President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, Sunni Vice President Tariq Al Hashemi and parliament speaker Mahmoud Al Mashhadani, also a Sunni, raised objection to Al Taie's execution, saying he should be spared in a gesture of national reconciliation.

Al Taie is a Sunni Arab. Many Sunni Arabs see his death sentence as further evidence of a Shiite and Kurdish witch hunt against their minority's once-dominant position and of undue influence by the Shiite-dominated government over the judiciary.

But Al Maliki, a Shiite, argued that stopping Al Taie's execution would itself amount to interference in the judiciary. Iraqi law provides no pardon for people convicted by a special court set up to try offenses committed under the regime of Saddam Hussain, Al Majid's cousin.

During a press conference, Al Maliki said he had no objection to finding a legal way to spare Al Taie if that could "unite political groups and tribes." But the prime minister, a Shiite, said he had "no right to behave according to my mood or personal opinions" and so far no one had found a legal basis to stop Al Taie's execution.

"The law was clear in giving one month to implement it," Al Maliki said of the sentence. "Now we have violated that law by not carrying it out." Al Maliki criticised the United States for its role in the issue.

The defendants are in American custody, and Iraqi officials have said the US has refused to hand them over until the dispute is resolved.

US officials have refused to comment except to confirm that the three are in an American-run jail.