BAGHDAD, Dec 23 (AFP) - Former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz is unwilling to testify against Saddam Hussein at a future war crimes trial, his lawyer told AFP after a four-hour meeting with his client Thursday at a US base near the capital.

"Tareq Aziz told me that he will not take the witness stand against Saddam," said Badi Aref Izzat.

The lawyer said that Aziz, who has been in US custody since his surrender in the immediate aftermath of last year's US-led invasion, had had no opportunity to see the ousted president.

The 11 senior aides currently in custody were being held together and were able to see each other for three hours a day but Saddam himself was being held separately, Izzat said.

Iraqi officials have said that Saddam is being held in Camp Cropper, a US base at Baghdad airport, but Izzat said he did not know exactly where the others were being detained as he had been taken there in a US armoured personnel carrier.

Aziz, an English-speaking Christian and former foreign minister who was the ousted regime's best known spokesman to the outside world, remained "in good health and spirits" despite his 20-month detention, the lawyer said.

In October there were a flurry of rumours that Saddam's faithful aide, who was born in 1936, had died in custody, although they were later comprehensively denied.

On July 1, Aziz was formally charged alongside his captive colleagues by the Iraq Special Tribunal established by the US-led coalition to try senior members of the former regime.

He was charged with two counts of mass murder, allegedly committed in 1979 and 1991, and punishable by death if he is found guilty.

Izzat said Aziz insists on his innocence and wants to call longtime information minister Mohammed Said al-Sahhaf and military intelligence chief Saber Abdel Aziz al-Duri as defence witnesses.

"Any accusation of my involvement in this affair is baseless," the lawyer quoted him as saying.

Aziz insists he could not have had any part in the suppression of Kurds immediately after the 1991 Gulf war, as alleged by the prosecution, as he was still foreign minister at the time and divided his time between Baghdad and Arab capitals.