I am Saddam ... I want to negotiate

Saddam Hussein's first words as he was captured by US troops were revealed today.

As the fallen dictator was pulled from the dank hole that had become his home he said: "My name is Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq and I want to negotiate."

American soldiers replied: "Regards from President Bush."

The exchange, recounted by Major Bryan Reed, operations officer for the 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, suggested the Iraqi leader would be willing to tell US intelligence everything he knows.

Of the most immediate importance would be any information on the insurgency responsible for the deaths of nearly 200 American soldiers.

The tip-off came from an individual arrested in Baghdad on Friday and brought to Tikrit on Saturday for interrogation, said Colonel James Hickey, who led the raid. Soldiers were seconds away from throwing a hand grenade into the hole when Saddam surrendered, the colonel added.

During the operation troops discovered "descriptive written material of significant value," said a US commander.

It could have been interrogation which gave the Americans the vital break. It could have been the lure of that $25 million reward. But there is little doubt today that Saddam was finally betrayed by those he regarded as most loyal.

The accuracy of the information which pinpointed his whereabouts to a couple of locations outside the village of Ad-Dawr showed it must have been the result of a betrayal by one of his relations or a member of his extended tribal family.

But the troops in the manhunt needed luck. Saddam changed his hiding place every four or five hours, and is thought to have had up to 20 or 30 different boltholes.

Co-ordinating the search was an unseen mini-army referred to by coalition military commanders in Iraq as Task Force 20 - several hundred "operatives" from the CIA, MI6, US Special Forces, SAS, Special Boat Service and US Navy Seals. More than 4,000 troops have been kept on standby to search likely hideouts.

The American command has spoken of an "incremental flow" of local intelligence. Over the past month, raids by the US 4th Infantry Division had pulled in between five and 10 close members of the dictator's tribal family.

They were believed to be part of the small, close-knit network spiriting Saddam around the Sunni Triangle, from northern Mosul to southern Baqubah.

The Americans are believed to have been given clues to his last-known hideouts by one - or more - of them, possibly motivated by the reward that Paul Bremer, the US administrator for Iraq, announced in July for information leading to the capture of Saddam or confirmation he was dead.

A smaller, $15 million bounty was also placed on the heads of each of his sons Uday and Qusay, who were later killed in a shoot-out in Mosul.

Saturday afternoon's Operation Red Dawn was backed by at least 20 members of Task Force 20.

At 4pm the officer in charge was first told the hiding place was that of a "high-value target" - and potentially HVT1: Saddam. Darkness had started to fall as the all-American force moved into position.

Their target was a farm complex, made up of orange and lemon groves, two farmhouses, a field, a sheep den and a mud hut, one mile north of the featureless town of Ad-Dawr.

This barren strip of land has long been neglected, although it is the hometown of Saddam's closest henchman, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri. Within the compound, two locations were identified as probable hiding places, labelledWolverine One and Wolverine Two.

By 6pm the strike force, including special operations troops, cavalry, aviation artillery, reconnaissance and engineering units, was on the ground.

At 8pm the force swooped in helicopters, tanks, Humvees and aircraft, surrounding the cluster of dirty buildings and cordoned off the farm. Two men armed with AK47s ran from one of the farm buildings and were quickly captured and disarmed.

There was no sign of Saddam in the two farmhouses. A painstaking search of the complex began. After 25 minutes they came to a mud hut, situated within a small, walled compound also containing a metal lean-to.

Almost immediately the search team realised they could have found something of significance. On a bare mattress inside the single filthy bedroom was a selection of T-shirts and socks still in their plastic wrappers - and on the floor, a battered metal suitcase containing $750,000 in $100 bills.

Outside the troops had found a Styrofoam trap door camouflaged with bricks and dirt and covered with a filthy piece of carpet.

They pulled away the hatch and shone a torch down into the hole below: there beneath them, in a narrow chamber six to eight feet deep, was a bedraggled and heavily bearded figure. It was 8.26pm: the search for Saddam Hussein was over.

Though armed with a loaded pistol, he did not resist. Groggy and disorientated, he was bundled into a vehicle in minutes and taken for a debriefing before being whisked out of the region by helicopter.

Later 4th Infantry commander Major-General Ray Odierno said: "As he came up he was very much bewildered. He was in the bottom of a hole, so there was no way he could fight back. He was just caught like a rat."