Washington ? U.S. officials announced the capture of an Iraqi operative with possible al-Qaida links Friday, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said other high-level prisoners were starting to provide useful information.

Farouk Hijazi, Iraq’s ambassador to Tunisia and a former high-ranking intelligence official, joins Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and others under interrogation. The key questions put to them: What happened to Saddam Hussein and the rest of the Iraqi leadership? Where are chemical and biological weapons hidden?

“You can be certain that the people who we have reason to believe have information are being interrogated by interagency teams, and they are in fact providing information that’s useful,” Rumsfeld said Friday at the Pentagon.

Hijazi was captured Thursday night at Iraq’s border with Syria, U.S. officials said. He had been in Tunisia when the war started and sought refuge in Syria as Saddam’s government fell, officials said.

It was unclear whether the Syrians expelled him. U.S. officials have been pressuring Syria to expel any Iraqi leaders.

“He is significant. We think he could be interesting,” Rumsfeld said.

Hijazi, born in Saudi Arabia, served as Iraq’s ambassador to Turkey in the late 1990s. In December 1998, U.S. officials believe he traveled to Afghanistan and say he may have met with Osama bin Laden in Kandahar.

Hijazi also served as the director of external operations for the Iraqi Mukhabarat, or intelligence service, in the early 1990s — the service’s No. 3 position. During this time, in 1993, Mukhabarat operatives are alleged to have plotted to assassinate former President George Bush with a car bomb, but Kuwaiti security forces foiled the plan.