GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Uncertainty clouded a bid to stage the first military commissions hearing of the Obama administration Monday as accused Canadian war criminal Omar Khadr protested disarray among his Pentagon-paid defense team.

The Toronto-born Khadr, 22, is accused of the grenade killing of a U.S. commando during a July 2002 assault on a suspected al Qaeda lair near Khost, Afghanistan. He was 15, and has grown up behind the razor wire of Camp Delta here.

Monday's hearing was meant to discuss a Defense Department request for delay while the White House promotes its plan to revise the terror trial rules on Capitol Hill. But the morning proceedings never got past the issue of who would defend Khadr.

The judge delayed the hearing until July 13 to give Khadr time to consult his family's lawyers in Canada on what he should do.

Asked by the judge who on his team would speak for him in court, Khadr climbed to his feet and replied: "Right now, nobody.''

At six feet, two inches, he towered over his military lawyers. He was clad in a white prison-camp uniform and still sported a bushy black beard that he had grown in seven-plus years at this remote detention center in southeast Cuba.

''The U.S lawyers have been in conflict for the past four months. It's not my fault,'' he told the case judge, Army Col. Patrick Parrish.

Khadr, who has had a succession of Pentagon-appointed lawyers, protested infighting over strategy in his latest team and asked to fire them all -- Navy Cmdr. Walter Ruiz, Lt. Cmdr. Bill Kuebler and Michel Paradis, a civilian lawyer paid by the Pentagon to work on commission defense case. Parrish refused.

''If it was my wish I want to erase all of them. But I don't have any choices,'' said Khadr.

''I can't trust these [American] lawyers. They've been accusing each other for the past four months, and fighting in front of me,'' he said. "I'm going to ask my Canadian lawyers to choose someone to represent me who I can trust.''

Neither of the Canadian attorneys approved as Guantánamo war court consultants were at Monday's hearing. They are Dennis Edney and Nathan Whitling of Edmonton, who have for years waged a legal battle in Canada's courts to bring the captive home without trial.

Under current war court rules, foreign attorneys can act as advisors but cannot defend alleged war criminals.

"Omar is entirely justified in dismissing his American attorneys," Whitling wrote in an email from Canada. "Given the terrible accusations that they have all made against one another, he doesn't know who he can trust, and who can blame him?"

Parrish told Khadr, who has had little formal education, that he could elect to defend himself. Instead, Khadr opted to keep Kuebler, who had worked on his case longest.

At issue, in part, were arguments slated for later in the day on whether to freeze the Khadr case.

President Barack Obama wants all trials delayed until September, his second so-called continuance, while a team lead by Attorney General Eric Holder decides which Guantánamo cases to prosecute in federal court.

Khadr has had on-again, off-again military hearings for about four years and prosecutors say Obama froze the war court on the eve of the Canadian's trial.

Critics say that Khadr should have been afforded the protections of a ''child soldier,'' rather than be treated as a terrorist enemy combatant at Guantánamo.

His conviction at the war crimes court could result in a life prison sentence. Prosecutors said they did not seek the death penalty in consideration of his young age.

His father, since killed in a Pakistani security raid, raised the boy between Canada, Pakistan and Afghanistan and sent him to al Qaeda paramilitary training camps along with his brothers.

Defense lawyers had for years sought delays to prepare their case or try to derail it.

But this week parts of the team were opposing a delay on grounds that Khadr is entitled to a speedy trial, a term that under military commission law permits a judge to dismiss a case without trial should the government delay too long.

The chief prosecutor, Navy Capt. John Murphy, declined to say this week how many days the Pentagon believed might have already run out on the so-called speedy trial clock.

He noted that given the revisions of commissions under the Obama administration, the trial clock figure might ultimately be litigated by the judge or an appeals court.

"The real question is, 'Why are we here?' '' said Alexander Abdo, an observer with the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's indicative of the kind of justice you get with an ad hoc system that hasn't even decided the basic rules of the commissions becuase they are being changed.''

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