STOCKHOLM, Sweden — Nobel literature laureate Harold Pinter, known for his pithy, spare writing in plays such as "The Caretaker" and "The Birthday Party," slammed President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, saying they should be prosecuted for the invasion of Iraq.

In a special Nobel lecture three days before the award ceremony, the British playwright focused more on politics than literature, saying Bush and Blair should be arraigned before the International Criminal Court.

"The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law," Pinter said in the recorded lecture presented Wednesday at the Swedish Academy.

Pinter, 75, who has been treated for cancer of the esophagus in recent years, was supposed to have delivered the traditional Nobel lecture in person, but was forced to cancel his trip to Sweden because of poor health.

His publisher, Stephen Page, will accept the $1.3 million prize on Pinter's behalf today.

In his lecture, Pinter said Bush and Blair were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in the Iraq war: "How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?"

Pinter accused the United States of supporting "every right-wing military dictatorship in the world" after World War II, from Chile to the Philippines.

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them," he said. "It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."

Pinter said the U.S. "also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain."

The Nobel committee has not shied from rewarding writers who protest authority, notably in rewarding the literature prize to Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 1970.