The CIA has taken control of the interrogation of Saddam Hussein , U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday. And he defended releasing film of the grubby former Iraqi dictator after his capture.

Rumsfeld refused to say whether or not a bearded Saddam, pulled from a hole in the ground by U.S. troops in Iraq over the weekend, was cooperating with his captors.

Heaping scorn on captured Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tells reporters at the Pentagon that the former leader was caught like a 'common fugitive,' hiding in a hole, in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2003. Rumsfeld says the CIA will take the lead in interrogating Saddam.  [AP]

"I have asked (CIA Director) George Tenet to be responsible for the handling of the interrogation of Saddam Hussein," the secretary told reporters, stressing that the civilian spy agency was better for the task than the military.

"He (Tenet) and his people will be the regulator over the interrogations -- who will do it, the questions that will get posed, the management of the information that flows from those interrogations. And my instinct is to leave it there," Rumsfeld said.

Pressed at a Pentagon briefing about reports that Saddam was being cooperative or defiant, the secretary said he would not comment on what some U.S. military officers were saying in Iraq and Washington.

"I think that characterizing his general relationship with his captors would probably be -- the best word would be -- resigned," he said.

But Rumsfeld reacted sharply when pressed by reporters on whether almost immediately releasing film to the world of an apparently confused Saddam being examined by a U.S. military doctor was a violation of the Geneva Conventions on treatment of captives.

'WE OPT FOR SAVING LIVES'

"If lives can be saved by physical proof that that man is off the street, out of commission, never to return, then we opt for saving lives. And in no way can that be considered even up on the edge of the Geneva Convention protections," he snapped.

"He is being accorded the protection of a POW (prisoner of war), but he's not being legally described as one at this stage. He clearly is being treated under the Geneva Convention, with the protections of the Geneva Convention and is being treated humanely."

A top Vatican official said on Tuesday he felt pity and compassion for Saddam and criticized the U.S. military for showing the video footage.

"I felt pity to see this man destroyed, (the military) looking at his teeth as if he were a cow. They could have spared us these pictures," said Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Justice and Peace department and a former papal envoy to the United Nations.

Rumsfeld also defended allowing some members of the current Iraqi Governing Council to question Saddam and former members of his fallen government to help identify him.

The Geneva Conventions forbid captors from holding their captives up to public contempt, but Rumsfeld said the meetings were arranged because the U.S. military did not immediately have DNA evidence confirming that the prisoner was Saddam.

"It is not a matter of parading various people before him for the sake of curiosity ... the decision was made to have him publicly identified," he said.

Rumsfeld told reporters that now decisions had been made yet on the status of Saddam, but that was likely to be decided by a committee of representatives of U.S. government agencies.

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