BAGHDAD - The son of Tareq Aziz, the former Iraqi deputy prime minister now in US custody, appealed Friday for his immediate release as lawyers called for European nations to accept him for urgent medical treatment.

Giovanni Di Stefano, a lawyer acting for Aziz who was one of the main figures from Saddam Hussein's deposed regime, told AFP that the defence team had filed an application with the Iraqi government to free him immediately.

The request was made on compassionate grounds "bearing in mind his precarious health and other mitigating factors," h said in a statement.

Di Stefano said he had written to the foreign ministers of France, Italy and Sweden asking if Aziz could receive medical treatment in their countries.

"Whilst H.E. Tariq Aziz will always consider Iraq his home, for practical reasons he will require safe and secure medical attention" which can only be obtained abroad, he said.

The lawyer also said prosecutors recently dropped charges of crimes against humanity levelled against Aziz, replacing them with charges of financial irregularities.

He said that as Aziz has been detained since the downfall of Saddam in April 2003, even if convicted, he would not be sentenced to a longer jail term than that already served.

Another lawyer for Aziz, Badie Arif Ezzat, warned on Thursday that his client's health has recently seriously deteriorated following cerebral embolism and heart problems, and that he could soon die.

But a US official said Aziz's health had not significantly worsened recently, noting that he had already been suffering from existing ailments when taken into custody.

Aziz's son Ziad also made an appeal Friday for his father's release.

"We call on the concerned people, chiefly the (US-led) occupation forces and the Iraqi government to cooperate and tell us the truth about his health situation and release him," he told Al-Arabiya television.

"We call on those (US-led forces) who claimed that they were coming to Iraq ... to defend human rights... to release him," he said.

"My father has been jailed for 34 months until now, without justification and no charges have been levelled against him," he said from Jordan where his family his based.

"My mother and my sister Zaynab went today to Iraq... to knock on all the doors possible in order to know the truth about his health situation.

"We do not have the least idea about his health situation, we only get what we are told through the lawyer and family visits are very rare," he said.

Ziad said that "if the Americans decided to release my father, they should release him and allow him out of Iraq."

"We have nobody in Iraq and the only house we own has been seized by Mr Abdel Aziz Al-Hakim who turned it into a headquarters" for his party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), he claimed.

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