UAE-based Al Arabiya news channel reported Friday that the toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had secretly accepted a last-minute plan to go into exile in 2003 to avoid Iraq war, but Arab leaders shot the proposal down.

UAE President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan proposed the exile plan at an emergency Arab summit, led by Secretary-General Amr Moussa, weeks before the U.S. invasion began in March 2003.

But the 22-member Arab League rejected the proposal, Reuters said.

"We had got the final agreement from the different parties, the main players in the world and the person concerned -- Saddam Hussein -- within 24 hours," Mohammed bin Zayed, deputy head of the UAE armed forces and crown prince of Abu Dhabi, told Al Arabiya in a documentary.

The Iraqi delegation attending the summit, which was held in Egypt, was unaware of Saddam's "secret consent" to the plan, which Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri dismissed as "silly", according to the documentary.

"So we were coming to put facts on the table, and there would have been results had it been discussed," he said.

Earlier this month, Saddam and seven members of his former regime went on trial for crimes against humanity over the killing of 148 Shia men from the town of Dujail.

Moving trial to The Hague

A member of Saddams defence team wrote to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan demanding moving the court trying the ousted Iraqi leader to The Hague and replacing its Iraqi judges by foreign ones, reported AFP.

"We submit to you our request for your involvement and your good office in the present circumstances to call upon the U.S. authority and the present government of Iraq to review the legal status of the present court and to reallocate the present court outside Iraq, i.e. The Hague, Netherlands," Najib al-Nawimi wrote to Annan from defence lawyer.

He demanded the court to be given "independent and impartial international judges" and to pressure the Iraqi authorities to recognize Saddam other members of the former Iraqi regime as prisoners of war.

Prosecutors "did not hand over to the defence team a copy of the accusation list, neither granted us a proper access to our clients nor to have sufficient time as we had requested (for) three months," he charged, complaining of serious security concerns following the assassination of an attorney representing one of Saddam's co-defendants earlier this month.

Al-Nawimi said elements within the Iraqi interior ministry are behind the assassination of Saadun Janabi.

"Though they have denied the present governments involvement, the material witnesses, we have proved the involvement of the present government in the assassination, which kept all the defence team feeling that they will be the second to be assassinated," he wrote.

"We are in a very dangerous situation where the present Iraqi government has no control over our security to attend and participate in such a trial."

Saddam's Amman-based defence team announced Wednesday suspending all contacts with the court on security grounds.

"In view of the dangerous security conditions in Iraq and their impact on Iraqi members of the defence team, along with the never-ending threats against them and their families... a decision has been taken to fully suspend all contacts with the Iraqi Special (now High) Tribunal," the lawyers statement said.