MOSCOW, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- The hanging of Saddam Hussein is increasing terrorism in Iraq rather than deterring it, a Russian official said Sunday.
"Instead of so much needed national reconciliation and concord, the Iraqi people are facing a new wave of fratricide and numerous casualties," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said in a statement Sunday accoridng to a report carried by the RIA Novosti news agency.
Kamynin said the deteriorating situation in Iraq needed to be acknowledged "by all those who have sent troops to Iraq and whose 'coalition liberation mission' resulted in an execution of the former notorious dictator."
"A hasty and cruel execution, which its external supporters were not ashamed to broadcast to the whole world, will certainly widen the split in the Iraqi society," he said according to the RIA Novosti report.
The former Iraqi president was hanged on Saturday after his appeal against his Nov. 5 conviction for ordering the reprisal killings of 148 Shiite Muslims was rejected by an Iraqi court. Saddam remained defiant to the end.
