Saleh al-Armouti said on Thursday that Saddam had told him the Americans had offered to treat him "like Napoleon", whom the British imprisoned on St Helena island in the Atlantic ocean in the 19th century, "if he called on the resistance to end its activities".

Mr Armouti, who met Saddam in prison in Baghdad last month, reported him as saying the Americans had told him that if he turned down the offer, there was an alternative. "The other offer was for him to be treated like Mussolini," Mr Armouti said, referring to the Italian dictator who was shot and strung from a lamp post by partisans in the last days of World War II.

A US military spokesman in Baghdad, Lieutenant-Colonel Barry Johnson, dismissed the lawyer's report.

"This appears to be some vain attempt by a lawyer to make it look as if Saddam still has some power or authority over people, which he doesn't,"he said.

An American journalist held hostage in Iraq for more than a month appeared in a new video tape aired on a private Kuwaiti TV station on Thursday, appealing for help in securing her release.

Jill Carroll, 28, was wearing a headscarf and appeared in good health in the brief clip aired by Alrai TV. "I'm here with the mujahideen. I sent you a letter written by hand. I'm here, I'm fine. Please just do whatever they want," she said. "Give them whatever they want as quickly as possible. There is very short time. Please move fast."

She said the video had been recorded on February 2.

The chairman of Alrai TV, Jassem Boodai, said the station did not plan to broadcast the contents of the letter, instead handing it to Kuwaiti authorities.

Carroll, a freelance journalist working for The Christian Science Monitor, was abducted in Baghdad on January 7 by militants who killed her Iraqi interpreter.

The Christian Science Monitor said it wanted more information about the letter.