(Adds comments from UN rights chief)

By Alastair Macdonald and Claudia Parsons

BAGHDAD, Jan 3 (Reuters) - U.S. forces had no role in Saddam Hussein's hanging, but would have handled it differently, a U.S. general said on Wednesday as Iraqi authorities questioned a guard over a video of officials taunting Saddam on the gallows.

National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said a committee investigating who had illicitly filmed and leaked a video of the hanging was questioning one of the guards at the prison facility where Saddam was hanged at dawn on Saturday.

There were conflicting reports of whether Saddam's two co- defendants, including his half-brother Barzan, would be hanged on Thursday at dawn. Rubaie said the date had not been set.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour appealed to Iraq not to execute the two men. As the White House said President George W. Bush had not seen the Saddam video, Major General William Caldwell urged the Iraqi government to reach out to disillusioned Sunni Arabs, who have warned that the execution and film are blows to the Shi'ite-led government's efforts at national reconciliation.

Caldwell said U.S. forces, who had physical custody of Saddam for three years, left all security measures at Saddam's hanging, including access to the execution chamber, to Iraqis.

"Had we been physically in charge at that point we would have done things differently," Caldwell told a news conference.

"At this point the government of Iraq has the opportunity to take advantage of what has occurred and really reach out now in an attempt to bring more people back into the political process and bring the Sunnis back," he said, singling out a need to ease restrictions on former members of Saddam's Baath party.

"It's a real critical juncture."

In unusually direct advice from the U.S. military to Iraqi leaders, Caldwell said the country's government and parliament "will have to rise above past divisions".

"This will entail difficult decisions ... and hard compromises necessary for national reconciliation."

VIDEO STIRS ANGER

Caldwell said there had been a lull in violence over the Eid al-Adha holiday which started on Saturday, but U.S. forces were braced for a possible violent backlash still to come.

Thousands of Saddam's fellow Sunni Arabs have marched to vent anger at the execution in Sunni Arab strongholds. More mourners came to visit his grave in his home village of Awja on Wednesday, and other towns also saw further demonstrations.

The unofficial video of the hanging, apparently filmed on a mobile phone, showed Shi'ite officials mocking Saddam just before he was hanged, inflaming sectarian passions in a country already on the brink of sectarian civil war.

Rubaie blamed the video on people trying to raise tension.

"Whoever leaked this video meant to harm national reconciliation and drive a wedge between Shi'ites and Sunnis," said Rubaie, one of some 20 official witnesses at the hanging.

Sadiq al-Rikabi, an adviser to the prime minister, told Iraqiya state television that a number of guards at the facility had been taken in for questioning and investigators had identified a person suspected of filming the hanging.

Prosecutor Munkith al-Faroon, heard appealing for order on the video, told Reuters on Tuesday that two senior officials had filmed the hanging, challenging government claims guards did it.

TIMING

The timing of the execution, just four days after an appeal failed and on the first day of Eid, shocked many, both in Iraq and in the rest of the Muslim world.

A senior U.S. official told the New York Times Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was concerned that if Saddam was not hanged quickly he would somehow escape the noose.

"His concern was security, and that ... maybe there would be a mass kidnapping to bargain for Saddam Hussein's release," he said. "He was concerned that he might somehow get free."

Rubaie confirmed that Iraqi officials had been concerned Saddam might escape justice: "The question is not 'Why the rush in the execution?' The question is 'Why the delay?'

"Some people were talking about the Americans, saying they might take him to one of these islands controlled by the United States and exile him there."

Rubaie, Faroon and Sami al-Askari, a senior aide to Maliki, all said the date had not been set for the hanging of Barzan al -Tikriti, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad al-Bander, a former chief judge, despite other officials telling media they would hang on Thursday at dawn.

U.N. rights chief Arbour called for clemency.

"International law, as it currently stands, only allows the imposition of the death penalty as an exceptional measure within rigorous legal constraints," she said.

At the United Nations in New York, a spokeswoman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the U.N. leader was "strongly behind" and "fully endorses" Arbour's statement. (Additional reporting by Aseel Kami, Ibon Villelabeitia and Alastair Macdonald in Baghdad, Robert Evans in Geneva and Evelyn Leopold at the United Nations)

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