"The mother of all trials," Kuwait's Al-Qabas daily splashed across its front page, a reference to the "mother of all battles" description Saddam gave to the 1991 Gulf War that drove his forces out of the oil-rich emirate.

British newspapers said the trial would help Iraq and the wider Middle East region move forward.

"The proceedings should spotlight the enormity of Baathist crimes, whether gassing Kurds, subjecting Kuwait to a reign of terror or massacring Shias. Those revelations could prove cathartic for Iraq," said the rightwing Daily Telegraph, which backed last year's US-led invasion of Iraq.

"It (the trial) must be a further spur for change in a region with enormous potential that has not been realised," said The Times.

But the left-leaning Guardian described Thursday's opening-day proceedings as "staged" and warned that a proper trial by the Iraqi people "can only happen when they have an elected government and not a US-appointed regime."

France's Liberation said "the way in which (Saddam) is treated will be a test of the type of regime that Iraq will have."

Newspapers in Moscow also cast doubt on the Baghdad court's independence in the trial for war crimes of Saddam and 11 members of his former regime, who appeared for the first time on Thursday.

"Contrary to the tribunals in Nuremberg and The Hague, the tribunals for Rwanda and Sierra Leone, this court is not international or independent," said the centrist Isvestia.

There were inevitable comparisons to the trial in UN court in The Hague of former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic.