BAGHDAD, Iraq — Saddam Hussein called on Iraqis not to hate the American-led forces that invaded Iraq in 2003 in a farewell letter posted on a Web site yesterday, a day after an appeals court upheld the former dictator’s death sentence and ordered him to be hanged within one month.

One of Saddam’s attorneys, Issam Ghazzawi, confirmed to the Associated Press in Jordan that the letter was authentic, saying it was written by Saddam on November 5 — the day he was convicted by an Iraqi tribunal for ordering the killings of scores of Shiite Muslims in the city of Dujail in 1982.

“I call on you not to hate because hate does not leave space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking,” the letter said.

Mr. Ghazzawi said the letter was released on Tuesday and published on Saddam’s former Baath Party’s Web site yesterday.

The deposed leader said he was writing the letter because his lawyers had told him the Iraqi High Tribunal that tried his case would give him an opportunity to say a final word.

“But that court and its chief judge did not give us the chance to say a word, and issued its verdict without explanation and read out the sentence — dictated by the invaders — without presenting the evidence,” Saddam wrote.

“Dear faithful people,” Saddam added,”I say goodbye to you, but I will be with the merciful God who helps those who take refuge in him and who will never disappoint any honest believer.”

Meanwhile, some Saddam loyalists threatened to retaliate if the ousted Iraqi leader is executed, warning in a posting on the same Baath Party Web site that carried Saddam’s letter they would target American interests anywhere.

“The Baath and the resistance are determined to retaliate, with all means and everywhere, to harm America and its interests if it commits this crime,” the statement said, referring to Baath fighters as “the resistance.”

The Baath Party was disbanded after American-led forces overthrew Saddam in 2003. The Web site is believed to be run from Yemen, where a number of exiled members of the party are based.

Many Baghdad neighborhoods were jittery yesterday amid fears that Sunni Arab insurgents would target Shiite areas in revenge attacks. There was a heavy police presence in the downtown area of Karrada, and parents picked up their children from a school after reports of a car bomb in the area.

Violence appeared to be relatively minimal, though, with one car bomb explosion killing eight civilians and wounding 10 near an Iraqi army checkpoint in the capital, police said.

The American military reported three new troop deaths yesterday, bringing the American death toll for December to 93 in one of the bloodiest months for the American troops in Iraq this year. Some 105 troops were killed in October, according to an Associated Press count.