SADDAM REPORTEDLY PUTS ONE WIFE UNDER HOUSE ARREST.

Byline: Associated Press

Saddam Hussein put one of his wives under house arrest after she opposed his plan to forgive the killers of his two sons-in-law, Iraqi dissidents said Wednesday.

Saddam also has ordered training exercises for his troops and is pondering invading Kuwait again, a senior U.S. military officer said in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity.

National Security Adviser Sandy Berger later confirmed that Iraq has been conducting military exercises, but presidential spokesman Mike McCurry said he was unaware ``of anything that would suggest any offensive designs.''

The Iraqi president increasingly has relied on a dwindling inner circle of close family members since the end of the Persian Gulf War, when a U.S.-led alliance forced him to withdraw his troops from Kuwait.

Dissidents say he wants relatives of his sons-in-law to forgive the killers as a way of reuniting his feuding clan. But Sajida Talfah, Saddam's first wife, insisted that those who took part in the killings must be punished before there can be a family reconciliation, the dissidents said.

McCurry said Wednesday that there appeared to be ``complicated internal struggles for power'' going on in Iraq, citing as evidence an attempt last month on the life of Saddam's eldest son and heir apparent, Odai.

Odai appeared on Iraqi television Wednesday night, lying on his hospital bed while chatting with senior government officials. Television footage of the reception at Ibn Sina hospital was shown on Youth Television, the TV station owned and run by Odai.

Odai, in his early 30s, was wearing a white hospital shirt. He was moving his right arm freely, but there was no visible movement in his left arm.

The U.S. military official in Washington said Odai may be paralyzed and could lose a leg to gangrene.

The house arrest of Saddam's first wife apparently is linked to the deaths of Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel al-Majid and his brother Saddam. They were killed by family members after returning to Iraq in February from Jordan, where they had defected.

Hussein Kamel al-Majid had been in charge of Iraq's secret weapons program and Saddam Kamel al-Majid was deputy head of the Iraqi leader's palace guard.