BAGHDAD, Iraq — A thinner but combative Saddam Hussein returned to court Wednesday for the first time since his hunger strike and hospitalization, complaining he had been forced to attend the proceedings and asking to be executed by firing squad if the court sentences him to death.

"I was brought against my will directly from the hospital," Saddam told the chief judge. "The Americans insisted that I come against my will. This is not fair."

He asked the court to execute him by firing squad — "not by hanging as a common criminal" — if it convicts him of all charges and sentences him to death.

"I ask you being an Iraqi person that if you reach a verdict of death, execution, remember that I am a military man and should be killed by firing squad," he said.

Chief Judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman reminded Saddam that the trial was still under way and that the court had not reached a verdict. Executions in Iraq are normally by hanging.

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. and Iraqi soldiers captured six members of an alleged "death squad" in Baghdad on Tuesday, hoping to quell the rampant sectarian violence dividing the capital. Attacks elsewhere in Iraq left at least 34 people dead — including an American soldier.U.S. troops killed a local al-Qaida in Iraq leader and captured three of his followers during a raid near Beiji in northern Iraq, the U.S. military said.In Washington, President Bush met Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at the White House to discuss the deteriorating security situation. Bush said a U.S. military program to bolster Iraqi security forces in Baghdad will better address the violence there as he pledged to stand by Iraq's new democratic government."He believes and I believe that there needs to be more forces inside Baghdad who are willing to hold people to account," Bush said during a joint news conference.Bush said improved military conditions outside Baghdad will make it possible to move U.S. military police and other forces to the capital.Al-Maliki said the most important element of a new security program "is to curb the religious violence."Representatives of Iraq's ethnic and sectarian groups met in Cairo, Egypt, to discuss ways to reconcile. Some 30 delegates representing Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds and other smaller minorities participated in discussions sponsored by the Cairo-based Arab League.

KABUL, Afghanistan — A bomb exploded near a taxi on a busy Kabul road Tuesday, killing two Afghans, and a U.S. soldier and seven militants died in fighting in the east — the latest wave of violence threatening Western attempts to rebuild Afghanistan.Afghan authorities were also investigating the death of a Canadian man who was found in a house in northern Afghanistan. Four men were detained for questioning, officials said.Meanwhile, the U.S.-led coalition announced it had killed more than 600 Taliban rebels in the past six weeks during an operation with Afghan forces to crush insurgents in the south.