US Secretary of Defense Daonald Rumsfeld said Tuesday that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein,who was captured by US troops in Iraq last Saturday,was not legally designated as a POW (prisoner of war).

But Saddam was being accorded the protection of a POW,Rumsfeld said at press conference at the Pentagon.

He said the former Iraqi president was being treated under the Geneva Convention,and "is being treated humanely."

Rumsfeld denied the United States had infringed the Geneva Convention by allowing images of a dishevelled Saddam Hussein to be broadcast worldwide.

The Geneva Convention on the treatment of POW prohibits detainees from facing "humiliating and degrading treatment"and demands they be protected against "insults and public curiosity."

Defending the use of film of Saddam just after he was captured,Rumsfeld said the ousted Iraqi leader "has not been held up as a public curiosity in any demeaning way,by reasonable definitions by the Geneva Convention."

Rumsfeld warned Baghdad in March during the early days of the Iraq war that by broadcasting images of captured US soldiers,the Iraqi regime was in a violation of the convention.

Despite the capture of Saddam,the defense secretary said,"Theglobal war on terror continues."

"We still face terrorists --terrorists in Iraq,Afghanistan,and across the world --who seek to harm our people.And the war on terror will not be over until those terrorists have been defeated,"he said.Enditem