Saddam will be accorded POW protections, Rumsfeld says

WASHINGTON — Saddam Hussein will have protections accorded to prisoners of war as U.S. officials try to press him for information on the insurgency against coalition forces, top defense officials say.

Saddam's capture is already reported reaping dividends for the U.S. military. The first transcript of Saddam's initial interrogation and a briefcase of documents he had with him helped lead to the capture of several top regime figures, one commander told the Associated Press Monday.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday it was too early to know whether Saddam would take a hardened approach with interrogators or would cooperate, but he described Iraq's former leader as one who projected a tough-guy image but was captured cowering in a hole in the ground.

"At this point I wouldn't characterize it ... either way, cooperative or uncooperative," Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, said Monday.

"In my interfaces with him he has been talkative. He'll respond readily to questions that are asked of him in terms of just normal administrative requirements," Sanchez told The Early Show on CBS. "That's how I would term his cooperation with us at this point."

President Bush said in a brief television speech Sunday that Saddam's capture Saturday was "crucial to the rise of a free Iraq. It marks the end of the road for him, and for all who bullied and killed in his name."

Bush scheduled a meeting with an Iraqi medical delegation at the White House on Monday.

While U.S. officials are waiting to see whether the Saddam's capture leads to an increase of insurgents' attacks against troops of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, there has been no indication that the domestic terror alert level will rise above yellow — the middle of a five-color scale.

Saddam was taken to an undisclosed location where, Rumsfeld said, "he would be accorded the privileges as though he were a prisoner of war — not that he necessarily is one."

If it is found that Saddam was involved in the attacks against coalition troops, he might be placed in a different category, Rumsfeld said, without elaboration.

"One need not worry that he'll be treated in a humane and professional way," governed by the Geneva Convention that spells out the treatment that prisoners must receive, the secretary said on CBS' "60 Minutes."

The convention prohibits violence, cruelty and torture of prisoners, while also barring humiliating and degrading treatment.

There were conflicting clues as to whether Saddam was playing a major role in the attacks on coalition forces.