BAGHDAD, Iraq – Saddam Hussein met with a defense lawyer yesterday for the first time since his capture a year ago, days before several of his top aides are due to appear in court for hearings on alleged war crimes.

The unidentified attorney spent four hours with the 67-year-old former dictator at Saddam’s undisclosed detention site, said his chief lawyer, Ziad al-Khasawneh.”He was in good health and his morale was high and very strong,” Mr. al-Khasawneh said. “He looked much better that his earlier public appearance when he was arraigned a few months ago.”

The Iraqi interim government’s push to get the trials for Saddam’s former lieutenants under way before the January 30 national elections has led to dissent even within the Iraqi Cabinet.

“Trials as symbolic as those against the dignitaries of the former regime should only start after the establishment of an Iraqi government with ballot-box legitimacy,” the Iraqi justice minister, Malik Dohan al-Hassan, told the Geneva daily newspaper Le Temps.

Prime Minister Allawi said Tuesday that proceedings could begin as early as next week before the Iraqi Special Tribunal.

Saddam will not be among the first to appear in court. But his notorious former right-hand man, Ali Hassan al-Majid – the ex-general known “Chemical Ali” for his use of chemical weapons – is expected to appear along with 11 other former regime members at the initial investigative court hearing next week.

“The cases against his henchmen are probably less complicated to prove than the cases against him,” a former federal judge who toured Iraq to assess its judiciary, Stephen Orlofsky, told CNN.

“There are probably fewer crimes and the evidence may be stronger and I’m sure the prosecution is hopeful that one or more of them will ultimately cooperate and testify against Saddam,” Mr. Orlofsky said.

He said Saddam will face a special tribunal of five judges that was created to try war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

In Baghdad,an American military official familiar with the case confirmed Saddam was visited by a lawyer for the first time since being hauled from his “spider hole” on a farm near his hometown of Tikrit on December 13, 2003.

With six weeks of campaigning under way ahead of the crucial vote for a 275-member assembly, interim President Ghazi al-Yawer predicted regional and international interests will spend millions of dollars to influence the balloting – a statement aimed primarily at Iran and Syria.

“There are many parties, regional, and international, who want to serve their own interests and they want to have friends in power in Iraq,” Mr. al-Yawer said. “We think that millions of dollars will be spent on the elections process from outside the country. We hope that this will not happen and that the money and the decisions will be Iraqi.” Mr. al-Yawer’s comments came a day after the defense minister, Hazem Shaalan, accused Iran and Syria of supporting terrorism in Iraq.

Mr. Shaalan said Tehran and Damascus backed former Saddam security operatives and Iraq’s top terror figure, Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The remarks seemed timed to coincide with announcements by Mr. Allawi and Mr. al-Yawer – both seen as strongly opposed to Iranian influence in Iraqi affairs – to run in the elections.

Officials in Baghdad and Washington have long accused Iran and Syria of letting militants cross into Iraq to fight American-led forces. Tehran and Damascus deny it.

Many expect Iraq’s raging insurgency to dog the campaign and the election itself, potentially scaring voters from polling stations, a result that would boost claims by opponents of the American-backed government that the polls are illegitimate. Insurgents yesterday killed 10 people – including a government official gunned down in the capital and three refugees slain by a rocket attack in northern Iraq.