With the surrender of Tariq Aziz, the possible capture of his mentor,Saddam Hussein, could be significantly more likely, writes Lara Marlowe in Baghdad.
Tariq Aziz wanted his surrender to US forces in Baghdad on Thursday night to resemble the trompe l'oeil image he conveyed to the outside world for the past three decades: civilised and dignified.
The former Iraqi deputy prime minister reportedly negotiated with the Americans for several days through an intermediary, possibly the Papal Nuncio in Baghdad. A Chaldean Catholic, Mr Aziz visited Pope John Paul II shortly before the coalition invasion of Iraq.
Although he was sometimes portrayed as a mere front man, used by Saddam for his smooth manners and ease with foreigners, Mr Aziz was one of those closest to the fallen dictator, after Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay.
With his detention, the hunt for former members of the regime moves tantalisingly close to Saddam himself. Ranked only 43rd on the US list of 55 wanted Iraqi officials, Mr Aziz is the best-known figure caught to date.
Twelve men on the list are now in US custody, and three are believed to have been killed. A former head of external operations for Iraqi intelligence, Farouk al-Hijazi, was also arrested on Thursday. Mr al-Hijazi is accused of planning an assassination attempt against Mr George Bush snr in 1993.
Would Mr Aziz betray his mentor of 40 years to the Americans? The two first met at a Baath Party congress in 1963. Christians played a prominent role in the early days of the Arab Socialist party, when Mr Aziz changed his Christian name to make it sound more Arab.
He is believed to have personally participated in the 1979 executions of 22 leading Baathists accused by Saddam of treachery. As a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, he would have helped plan the 1980 attack on Iran and the invasion of Kuwait 10 years later.
Mr Aziz's luxurious villa on the banks of the Tigris was looted on April 10th, the day after US forces arrived in Baghdad. Neighbours said US tanks and Humvees, a GMC with tinted windows and a white BMW came to fetch him at his sister-in-law's house in the Zeitoun neighbourhood of east Baghdad before midnight on Thursday.
The soldiers cut the electricity and were equipped with night vision equipment. Some climbed over the garden wall, advancing with their weapons through date palms.
But no shots were fired. US medics were present. The 67-year-old Mr Aziz has suffered two heart attacks in recent months.
In looks, voice and manner, he is a cross between Groucho Marx and Henry Kissinger, with a penchant for Havanas and French wine. He was the only founding member of the Baathist regime at ease outside Iraq.
The son of a land-owner from the northern city of Mosul, he studied English literature and edited the Jumhurriyah and al-Thawra newspapers before serving as Saddam's information minister, foreign minister and deputy prime minister.
Between August 1990 and January 1991 he negotiated with the US secretary of state, Mr James Baker, often presenting irrational arguments and misleading information in a convincing manner.
Mr Aziz appeared in public on March 19th, the day before the war started, to quell rumours that he had defected to Kurdistan. I attended his last, unannounced, press conference, on the evening of March 24th at the Palestine Hotel. In his low, droning voice, wearing a Baath Party uniform, he spoke for close to an hour in English without notes, ignoring air-raid sirens and explosions outside. "If US soldiers invade Iraq, they will be received with bullets. Not flowers, not music, with bullets," Mr Aziz predicted.
He mocked US statements in the opening days of the war: "They said they wanted to 'decapitate' the Iraqi leadership, as if we were a bunch of chickens."
As Iraq's foreign minister, Mr Aziz welcomed Mr Donald Rumsfeld, now US Secretary of Defence, to Baghdad in 1983. During that last press conference, with Mr Rumsfeld's bombers overhead, he pointedly referred to "Donald Rumsfeld . . . whom I personally know."
The US supported Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1980s, and Mr Aziz's silence about that period could be as valuable to Washington as what he knows about Saddam.