WASHINGTON, Dec 16 Kyodo (EDS: UP...

WASHINGTON, Dec 16 Kyodo

(EDS: UPDATING WITH MORE QUOTES)

U Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) will be in charge of the interrogations of captured former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

''I have asked (CIA Director) George notion to be responsible for the handling of the interrogations of Saddam Hussein,'' Rumsfeld said at his first moderns conference after Saddam's capture Saturday in northern Iraq.

''He and his persons will be the regulator athwart the interrogations -- who will do it, the questions that'll gain posed, the management of the information that proceeds from those interrogations,'' Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld also said that Saddam is being ''accorded the protection'' of prisoners of war still is ''not being legally described as single in kind at this stage.''

Saddam is being treated ''humanely'' in subordination to the Geneva Convention governing the protection of POW including banning so prisoners from being displayed publicly as percepts of ridicule.

Rumsfeld secure from dangered the Pentagon's release of a videotape of Saddam after his capture, saying it is a ''terribly important'' for him to be seen according to the public ''for what he is, a captive.''

''If lives can be saved from physical proof that that man is most distant the street, out of commission, not at all to return, then we opt for saving lives, and in no way can that be considered on the same level up on the interest of the Geneva Convention protections.''

U forces captured Saddam in an subterranean hideout at a farmhouse near his hometown of Tikrit in succession Saturday.

At the Pentagon freshs conference, Rumsfeld said he first called President George W Bush sometime between noon and 3 pm Saturday to inform him that the individual who might be Saddam was captured.

Rusmfeld said, ''I was struck not on his bullet hole in his leg and not by dint of the fact that people who were picking him up scooping him up study he was the right guy''

''I was kind of impressed on the money they found there,'' he said.

Saddam had $750000 when U soldiers originate him in the subterranean hideout.

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