BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Saddam Hussein, testifying for the first time in his trial, called on Iraqis to stop killing each other and instead fight U.S. troops. The judge angrily reprimanded him for making a political speech and ordered the public to leave the courtroom.

In a shouting match, chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman told Saddam, "You used to be a head of state. You are a defendant now."

Saddam, dressed in a black suit and wearing large reading glasses, repeatedly brushed off the judge's demands that he address the charges against him -- the killing of 148 Shiites and the imprisonment and torture of others during a crackdown in the 1980s.

Instead, he read from a prepared text, addressing the "great Iraqi people" -- a phrase he often used in his presidential speeches -- and said he was "pained" by the recent wave of Sunni-Shiite violence.

"Let the people unite and resist the invaders and their backers. Don't fight among yourselves," he said in a rambling speech praising the insurgency.

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"In your resistance to the invasion by the Americans and Zionists and their allies, you were great. You were great in my eyes and you remain so... It's only a matter of time until the sun rises and you'll be victorious," he said.

Abdel-Rahman shouted at him again and closed the session for 90 minutes, ordering journalists out of the room and the delayed broadcast cut while Saddam finished reading his speech.

The stormy exchanges were a stark contrast to the past few sessions, when each of Saddam's seven co-defendants took the stand, one by one, and were questioned by the judge and prosecutor about the crackdown in the Shiite town of Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt on the then-Iraqi president.

Even Saddam's half-brother, former intelligence chief Barzan Ibrahim — who has frequently caused an uproar in the court in the past — submitted to more than three hours of questioning earlier Wednesday. He denied any role in the crackdown, and as prosecutors presented a series of intelligence memos on the arrests allegedly with his signatures, he insisted each was a forgery.

Prosecutors will have another chance to try to question Saddam on the charges when the trial reconvenes April 5.

But in Wednesday's session, Saddam sought to project the image of a man still in power addressing his people in troubled times, even as Abdel-Rahman repeatedly stabbed a button on his desk to shut off Saddam's microphone.

At one point, the judge screamed, "Respect yourself!" Saddam shouted back: "You respect yourself!"

"You are a defendant in a major criminal case, concerning the killing of innocents. You have to respond to this charge," Abdel-Rahman told him.

"What about those who are dying in Baghdad? Are they not innocents?" Saddam replied. "I am talking to the Iraqi people."

Saddam began his speech by declaring he was the elected president, telling Iraqis "of all religions and sects ... I do not discriminate among you."

"What pains me most is what I heard recently about something that aims to harm our people," he said, referring to Shiite-Sunni violence that has rocked the country since the bombing of a major Shiite shrine in Samarra last month.