WASHINGTON – Prime Minister Allawi told reporters in a series of interviews yesterday that Saddam Hussein had become so shaken in his detainment that he was literally begging his longtime foe for mercy.

The London-based Arab daily, al-Hayat, quoted Mr. Allawi as saying the former Iraqi tyrant was “depressed and distraught” in Camp Cropper, an American military fortress. “Saddam transmitted a message to me begging for mercy,” Mr. Allawi told al-Hayat. “He said they had been working for the public interest and their goal was not to do harm.”

News of Saddam’s condition in prison came after Iraqi police found the decapitated body of an American contractor near a Baghdad mosque. The body of Eugene “Jack” Armstrong is now in the possession of the American government.

The group responsible for his abduction last week, Tawhid wal Jihad, or Unity and Holy War, is affiliated with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a senior terrorist believed by American authorities to have been trained by Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The kidnappers threatened to murder another hostage today if their demands of releasing Iraqi women in coalition custody are not met.

The image of Saddam distraught and begging for mercy in his jail cell is at odds with the calm and polished demeanor he exuded when he was first deposed earlier this year by the commission of Iraqi judges inside the Green Zone in Baghdad. In this appearance Iraq’s former dictator challenged the very authority of the court and implicated America for helping him in the 1980s.

The New York Times quoted American and Iraqi officials Sunday as saying that Saddam has insisted that he is still the president of his country in interrogations during which he defends the violence he directed against his victims, saying they were traitors.

The image of a cowering Saddam is more in keeping with the spectacle of his capture last December, when he was caught hiding in a hole outside of his home town of Tikrit. He was said to have put up no fight when American soldiers burst into the farmhouse where he was hiding and later allowed American soldiers to inspect his knotty hair and tongue before television cameras.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph of London, Mr. Allawi said Saddam’s trial would discourage the diehard remnants of the old Baathist regime and “show Iraq and those beyond Iraq that tyranny will not win.”

In the interview, Mr. Allawi was particularly critical of France for refusing to allow NATO to train Iraqi soldiers. He also called on France, Germany, and Russia to forgive the debt his country accumulated under the rule of Saddam.

Mr. Allawi, however, was optimistic that Russia would soon at least come around to further support Iraq in its struggle with Islamic terror. Referring to the terrorist assault on a school in Beslan, Mr. Allawi said, “We need to close ranks. This is a fight for civilization, progress, and stability. People cannot just sit down and say: ‘I am not going to have a problem.’ There is no country that is going to be spared these troubles.”

In the past Mr. Allawi has been firm in his contention that Saddam’s regime worked closely with Al Qaeda, a link that has been disputed in the last year among former American intelligence officers.

The prime minister said, according to the Telegraph, that the violence in Iraq was being prosecuted by a triple alliance – old Ba’athists who had many sins to account for; foreign insurgents; and criminals from the ranks of the 31,000 rapists, murderers, and thieves who were released from jail by Saddam in the final months of his rule.

Mr. Allawi also told al-Hayat yesterday that there have been four attempts on his life since June 28.”The fourth one took place just five days ago outside the Green Zone,” he told the Arabic daily. He also clarified that he did not believe the Iranian government was stirring up insurgent activity in Iraq. “Rather, it came from some circles that support particular religious tendencies.”

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Nasr Command has established positions in Iraq since the end of the war in March 2003, according to American intelligence. This division of the revolutionary guard also trained the militia affiliated with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose leader, Mohammed Bakr al-Hakim, was killed on August 29, 2003, in Najaf.

Mr. Allawi will meet with heads of state in New York this week for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly. He is scheduled to arrive in Washington on Friday.