Saddam Hussein is a defiant jailbird who still insists to his interrogators that he's the president of Iraq and wants to negotiate, Daily News sources said yesterday.

The CIA - in charge of grilling Saddam - is still devising a strategy, said one military official, adding that no serious interrogations have yet begun.

The military official said that when Saddam was quizzed informally about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, "he answered like pretty much everybody else who's been taken into custody: 'Don't know anything. We got rid of all the WMD.'"

He also isn't conceding any status to his captors, insisting on his former title and offering to negotiate, an intelligence source said.

When the CIA does start grilling Saddam, he can expect months of living under harsh conditions around the clock, said a former operations officer.

"They'll make interrogations the highlight of his days," said Frederick Rustmann, who taught CIA debriefing techniques to agents. "He'll look forward to being interrogated."

Still, there's little reason for Saddam to fess up, said Rustmann. "Unless the U.S. can figure out a way to let him live, I don't think he's going to talk."

But the military official insisted that breaking Saddam's will, like any terrorist, "is just a matter of finding what's important to these guys."

Gen. Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti - the ace of diamonds in the coalition's deck of 55 most-wanted Iraqis - was Saddam's bodyguard and refused to squawk after his June capture.

"But once he found out his family was safe, and the coalition ensured his family's safety, he started cooperating," the official said.

Sometimes just the threat of a rough interrogation is enough to loosen lips, sources said. Uncooperative Al Qaeda detainees have been scared into talking to U.S. officials by the mere presence of intelligence agents dressed in uniforms of Egyptian military officers, who are known for ruthless interrogation tactics.

U.S. intelligence agents have gotten decades' worth of interrogation experience in the past two years of the war on terror, but it might not help break the fallen Iraqi despot, said another former CIA officer.

Approaching a religiously motivated terrorist is different than getting a secular leader such as Saddam to open up, said former CIA counterterrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro.

"He sees himself as a historical figure," Cannistraro said. "He's unlikely to start confessing, kneeling down, crying, beating his breast and saying he did horrible things."