in reply to interactive command session possible?

Yeah, as Marshall suggested, I would try piping the password first:

system ( 'echo "password" | runas /user:winuser "command args"' );

The open function is another way to do the same thing:

open ( OUT, '| runas /user:winuser "command args"' ); print OUT "password\n"; close ( OUT );

su is wise to this trick on my Linux box, so it doesn't work, but maybe Windows can be fooled.