In the coffee shops, pundits were left groping for a plausible explanation for the disappearance of the Arab hero figure who dared stand up to the United States, 12 years after he fired Scud missiles at Israel during the Gulf War.

And the newspapers were filled with speculation over what went wrong for Saddam, as the demonstrations which had become a daily feature of the war fell silent.

In a region where conspiracy theories are rife and which felt let down by the evaporation of Iraqi resistance, the Lebanese press speculated about a possible secret deal between the United States and the Iraqi leadership.

"Shock and stupor," said the French-language L'Orient Le Jour in Beirut. It asked whether Saddam "negotiated his departure to some exile in return for leaving the keys of his capital in the door".

"Was it a last-minute deal?" asked the daily Al-Liwa.

The Syrian government called on the international community to allow the Iraqi people to "freely choose" their leaders, in a first official reaction from Damascus to the fall of Baghdad.

"In these dangerous circumstances, Syria calls on the international community to make every effort to put an end to the occupation," a foreign ministry statement said.

It called for the world community to "remedy the catastrophic situation resulting from the aggression with a view to permitting the Iraqi people to freely choose their government without foreign interference".

Damascus, ruled by a rival wing of the Baath Party which also governed Baghdad until Wednesday's downfall of President Saddam Hussein, was opposed to the war on its eastern neighbour.

Echoing the same view, Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher told US Secretary of State Colin Powell the Iraqi people must be left to decide their own future, the kingdom's official Petra news agency reported.

Fearing regional instability in the aftermath of the collapse of Saddam's regime and the ensuing chaos in Baghdad, Gulf Arab monarchies have also been urging Washington to allow the Iraqi people to choose their own government.

"The government in Baghdad we will deal with is the one chosen by the Iraqi people. We will not anticipate events. We will accept whatever the Iraqi people decide," Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said Wednesday.

He also called for an end to the US and British occupation -- widely seen a source of resentment by and humiliation of the Arabs -- as soon as possible.

The only Arab country to openly back the war, Kuwait sent its congratulations to Iraqis on their "liberation" and looked forward to the United Nations administering a post-war Iraq.

In the chattering coffee shops of Cairo, headquarters of the Arab League that failed to stop the war, Saddam's fate was the top item, with the conspirary theorists confident that he was smuggled out of Iraq.

"I am sure he is in Russia right now," said Talaat, a taxi-driver, taking a sip of his tea in the Agoza neighbourhood.

"He had taken refuge in the Russian embassy and the Russian envoy took him when he left to Russia," said Talaat, who like millions of others watched events unfold on Arab satellite TV channels with a heavy pro-Saddam slant.

The collapse of Saddam's regime came as a heavy blow for Palestinian Islamists, despite their ideological aversion to his secular Baath Party.

"We hope in future Iraq will change to Islam and there will be an intifada of all the Iraqi and Gulf people against American Zionism," said Abdul Aziz al-Rantissi, political leader of the radical Islamic movement Hamas.

In the Palestinian refugee camps of south Lebanon, Saddam's departure from the Middle East landscape was seen as a loss for their cause.

"As a Palestinian, I see our cause in danger after Saddam's fall because Iraq always gave us economic, political and moral support," said Samir Jomaa, a labourer in Ain el-Helweh camp, 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Beirut.

"It's a black day for us Palestinians," he said.

Adnan Rifai, a political leader in the Palestinian camp, said that for him, "the Battle of Baghdad was as on the same level as the liberation of Palestine. I don't understand what happened."

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