AMMAN - Saddam Hussein's defence team said they needed to discuss a string of demands they have made of the court trying him for genocide before they can call off a boycott of the proceedings.

Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein adjusts his headphones as he listens to witness testimony during his trial held in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone. Saddam's defence team said they needed to discuss a string of demands they have made of the court trying him for genocide before they can call off a boycott of the proceedings. [AFP]

"There will be contacts with the court, under the supervision of the Americans, and in light of that we will decide whether or not to end the boycott," Saddam's chief Iraqi lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi told AFP.

"We have legal demands and they will be discussed with the court, and then we will see," Dulaimi said in a telephone interview.

"Our priority now is to allow Arab and foreign lawyers to attend court proceedings ... and that the court gives us time to examine 10,000 documents presented by the state prosecution," Dulaimi said.

"We estimate that we need at least three months to study these documents," he said.

"We will hold intensive consultations with lawyers from inside and outside the defence team," Dulaimi added.

On Tuesday the presiding judge agreed to a request by the defendants for their lawyers to return to the courtroom after a month-long boycott, during which the defence has been replaced by seven court-appointed lawyers.

The ousted Iraqi leader is on trial with six others over the 1987-1988 Anfal campaign of bombings and gas attacks against the Kurds which prosecutors say left 182,000 people dead.

The defence team has boycotted the trial since September after the Iraqi government sacked chief judge Abdullah al-Ameri, who was replaced by Mohammed al-Oreibi al-Khalifah.

The defence team has denounced the action as "blatant intervention by the Iraqi government" in judicial procedures and issued over the past weeks a series of demands for their return to court.