The U.S. is holding 6,850 Iraqi war prisoners. Just a handful are top Iraqi leaders. In deciding what to do with the prisoners, the U.S. says that it is in uncharted legal waters.

Unlike the 660 or so captives held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay as part of the American war on terrorism, the POWs in Iraq were combatants in a conventional war, so the United States is bound by the Geneva Conventions in its treatment of them, the U.S. officials said.

A senior U.S. government official said yesterday that "it's very early in the process" of determining the legal fate of the Iraqi military officials in detention. But the government is inclined to divide those it eventually brings to justice into two groups, allowing Iraqi authorities to try people for "crimes against the Iraqi people," while courts under U.S. auspices would handle "crimes against Americans" such as Iraqi soldiers' waving a white flag before attacking, placing artillery in schools and mosques, and beating U.S. POWs, the official said.