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The United States said Thursday its forces have detained Tareq Aziz, the deputy prime minister in Saddam Hussein's toppled Iraqi regime.

"Tariq Aziz ... is now under coalition control," the US Central Command said in a statement.

ABC television said Aziz, the longtime defender of Saddam on the international stage, had given himself up.

In response to shouted questions about Aziz, US President George W. Bush flashed a broad smile to reporters as he arrived at the White House, raised his eyebrows, and gave a big "thumbs-up" sign.

Aziz, number 43 on the list of 55 most wanted Iraqi officials, was one of the best known figures in the Saddam regime. Twelve former top Iraqi officials have now been reeled in by a US-led dragnet since the fall of Baghdad.

Aziz played a leading role in making Iraq's case at the United Nations and other international arenas in the 12 years since the 1991 Gulf War when he was Iraq's foreign minister.

For years he led denials that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and in the months before the US-British invasion was launched on March 20 had denied that Saddam would go into exile. Urbane and fluent in English, he was the only Christian at the top level of the Baghdad regime.

Aziz went to see Pope John Paul II at the Vatican in February. He later prayed for peace at the tomb of Saint Francis of Assisi. His arrest came a day after the commander of the Iraqi air defense force, the director of military intelligence and the minister of trade were taken into custody.

Saddam, who was twice targeted by US air strikes, remains unaccounted for. British Defence Minister Geoffrey Hoon said Wednesday he believed Saddam is alive and inside Iraq. The Iraqi opposition has said the same.

Aziz, born in Mosul in 1936, is from an Assyrian Christian family, and kept outside the closed circle of Saddam's Sunni Moslem cronies from Takrit. But Saddam and Aziz had known each other since the 1950s and Saddam was said to listen to the widely travelled, avuncular Aziz.

They were comrades in the Baath party from the early clandestine days.

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