Baghdad - The United Nations' special envoy urged Iraq on Saturday to reconsider carrying out the first executions since the 2003 overthrow of former dictator Saddam Hussein.
Ashraf Qazi, special representative of UN secretary general Kofi Annan, said he "deeply regrets" the decision of an Iraqi government "in the process of transition" to reinstate the death penalty.
"One should look at consolidating the right to life instead of imposing the death penalty which has a very poor recognised effect in deterring crimes," Qazi said in statement.
The United Nations said that Vice President Adel Abdel Mehdi had signed a decree on Wednesday authorising the execution of three men sentenced to death for kidnapping policemen and raping Iraqi women.
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The men, suspected members of al-Qaeda-linked group Ansar al-Sunna, were sentenced to death in May - a verdict later approved by the Supreme Council for Justice, the highest judicial authority in Iraq.
Qazi pointed out in his statement, released by the New York office of the UN Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), that the Human Rights Commission in Geneva had "condemned the application of the death penalty" in April 2005.
The executions would be Iraq's first since capital punishment was suspended by the US-led occupation authority following the 2003 invasion.
Bayan Ahmad al-Jaf, a 30-year-old Kurdish taxi driver, and two Sunni Arabs - Uday Dawud al-Dulaimi, a 25-year-old builder, and Taher Jassem Abbas, a 44-year-old butcher - are due for execution in the next few days in the central city of Kut.
How they will be killed is not known, although during Saddam's regime common criminals used to be hanged, while deserting soldiers faced the firing squad.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a longstanding opponent of the death penalty, refused to sign the death warrants instead delegating the task to Mehdi.
Talabani said in May that he would not sign a death sentence against Saddam, whose trial on charges of crimes against humanity during his iron-fisted rule over Iraq, is expected to come up within the next two months.
But the executions could set a precedent for sentencing during the high-profile trials of former regime figures, including Saddam, who is in US custody awaiting trial.
The Iraqi Special Tribunal filed the first charges against Saddam in late July over the 1982 killing of 143 residents of the village of Dujail, northeast of Baghdad, where he had been the target of a failed assassination bid.
Human rights group Amnesty International also condemned the execution order, saying it was concerned that dozens of death sentences had been handed out in recent weeks.
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