Lawyers for Frans van Anraat, 64, have asked that Saddam and his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid -- known as "Chemical Ali" -- to be called as witnesses.

On Monday the appeals court asked an investigative judge to see if Saddam and other high-ranking members of his regime could be heard "in the short term".

The judges did not say when they would make their final ruling, but said they expected the appeals case to go to court in April next year.

Van Anraat was sentenced to 15 years in prison on December 23, 2005 on charges of abetting war crimes but was acquitted of complicity in genocide over the 1988 massacre of 5,000 Kurds by Saddam's regime.

The Dutch court in The Hague ruled that while the former Iraqi ruler committed genocide against Kurds in the 1980s, it had not been proven that Van Anraat knew of the regime's genocidal intentions.

Both the defence and the prosecution appealed the sentence.

Van Anraat, who lived as a fugitive in Iraq for 14 years until the United States-led invasion in 2003, was prosecuted in the Netherlands as Dutch law allows national courts to try Dutch residents over genocide and war crimes committed in other countries.

Saddam Hussein and six other accused are currently on trial in Baghdad for their role in the al-Anfal military campaign against the Kurdish population of Iraq that are estimated to have killed over 180,000 people in 1987 and 1988.