Iraq council approves 'Chemical Ali' hanging

While the council was not against hanging Majeed, there was internal disagreement over whether his two co-accused, Saddam's former defence minister, Sultan Hashem, and a former army commander, Hussein Rashid Muhammed, should suffer the same fate.

The legal wrangle has held up the execution of all three, who were due to have gone to the gallows within days of an Iraqi appeals court upholding their death sentences last September.

But a compromise solution appears to have been worked out to speed the execution of Majeed, whose death has long been sought by Iraq's newly empowered Shi'ite majority and Kurds, who suffered terribly at his hands.

"They approved it two days ago," a source at the presidency council told Reuters, referring to the council's rubber-stamping of Majeed's execution.

He said it would be up to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government to set a date for the death sentence to be carried out.

"It will be a matter of days," said an adviser to Maliki, who declined to be named, when asked when Majeed would be hanged.

The US military, which has custody of Majeed and other former members of Saddam's government, said it had not received a request to hand him over to the Iraqi authorities, which would signal that his execution was imminent.