The late dictator's foreign minister and spokesman said President Barack Obama's decision to continue with the withdrawal of combat troops despite worsening violence would endanger Iraq's future.

"We are all victims of America and Britain," he said, referring to the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam. "They killed our country in many ways. When you make a mistake you need to correct a mistake, not leave Iraq to its death."

He added that he had hoped Mr Obama would "correct some of the mistakes of [George W] Bush", but now viewed the new president as a "hypocrite".

"He is leaving Iraq to the wolves," he said in an interview with The Guardian.

"For 30 years Saddam built Iraq and now it is destroyed. There are more sick than before, more hungry. The people don't have services. People are being killed every day in the tens, if not hundreds," he said from his prison in Baghdad.

Earlier this week Mr Obama confirmed that the last US combat forces would leave on schedule on August 31. A total of 50,000 US forces will remain to train the Iraqi army, conduct counter-terrorism and protect US civilian projects.

The president's announcement came amid statistics from the Iraqi government that the number of Iraqi casualties in July was the highest for two years, figures the US disputed.

Al-Qaeda militants have exploited the uncertainty created by a five-month political stalemate between Shia, Sunni and Kurdish blocs in parliament that has left the country without a government.

Aziz, 74, was last month handed over to Iraqi custody by the Americans as Iraq assumed control of the last US-run prison in the country.

Already sentenced by the Iraqi High Tribunal to sentences of 15 years and seven years, he will face a new trial for squandering public wealth.

He refused to criticise Saddam, whom he asserted "built the country and served the people".

"Didn't Churchill make mistakes? Didn't [Gordon] Brown make mistakes? Did the British ministers stand up at the time and point out the lies of their leaders? No. They spoke later", he added.

He also defended the regime's conduct during 12 years of sanctions that followed the 1991 Gulf War, claiming that he and Saddam fed the population adequately despite widespread evidence that 500,000 children alone died because the regime siphoned off funds from the United Nation's oil-for-food programme.

The invasion of Kuwait that prompted the war and the subsequent sanctions was, he admitted, a mistake. He claimed he failed to dissuade Saddam from a decision that was bound to start a war with the US.

Saddam's pretence that he still possessed weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the 2003 US-led invasion was "partially about" showing a strong hand to Iran in the wake of the bloody eight-year war with Iraq's neighbour.

"Saddam was a proud man. He had to defend the dignity of Iraq. He had to show that he was neither wrong nor weak," said Aziz.