The British Home Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, hinted yesterday that the former Chilean dictator, Gen Augusto Pinochet, could be sent home on compassionate grounds after a plea by the Archbishop of Canterbury for a Christian approach.
The signal came as a legal challenge to Gen Pinochet's arrest was adjourned until Monday amid growing controversy over his detention.
Baroness Thatcher wrote to the London Times yesterday calling for him to be allowed to return home. Her strongly-worded letter brought condemnation from the Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, Labour back-benchers and the Liberal Democrats and an ambivalent response from the Conservatives.
The row threatened to engulf the visit of President Carlos Menem of Argentina to Britain next week, the first visit by an Argentinian leader, intended to help heal the wounds of the Falklands war. However after the publication of Mr Menem's "apology" for the war in today's Sun Downing Street spokesmen were more than ever keen to emphasise that the Pinochet would not overshadow an important political and trade mission.
The official government line is to insist the arrest of Gen Pinochet is purely a judicial matter, but Mr Straw last night suggested a possible outcome to what is threatening to turn into a diplomatic crisis.
In a parliamentary written answer, significantly highlighted by Downing Street, Mr Straw said that after the legal process had been exhausted, he had several options, including "any compassionate circumstances".
Gen Pinochet (82) is being treated in a London hospital and, according to right-wing Chilean senators who visited him this week, is not even aware he is under arrest.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, appeared to side with Baroness Thatcher when he told BBC Radio's Jimmy Young show: "I do hope, and I am confident, that our government will pay attention to the personal aspects of this and the caring, and to be compassionate in this situation. There are factors that led them to take the action they have done, and, of course, I am sure they will pay attention to Baroness Thatcher, as, of course, we all do."
In the High Court, two judges adjourned an emergency application by Gen Pinochet's lawyers to release him on a writ of habeas corpus on the grounds that his arrest was unlawful. Lord Justice Schiemann, sitting with Mr Justice Richards, agreed to put back the hearing until Monday to allow all the parties to marshal their arguments and after hearing that new warrants had been issued by the Bow Street stipendiary magistrate Ronald Bartle.
A spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service said the wording of the new warrant was not yet public, but would "better reflect the Spanish government's extradition request".
It is understood that Gen Pinochet's counsel, Mr Clive Nicholls, QC, intends to argue that the senator is accused of an unextraditable crime under English law: if a foreigner murders a British citizen in another country and is held in a third country, he cannot be brought back for trial.
He will also claim that under the Vienna Convention and international customary law Gen Pinochet enjoys state immunity as the alleged crimes were committed in the exercise of his function as a head of state.
The new warrants, drawn up by the Crown Prosecution Service on the advice of the Spanish government, are believed to include other extraditable offences besides the murder of Spanish citizens in Chile. In court yesterday, Mr Nicholls said: "It is our submission throughout that the original arrest and detention of Senator Pinochet was unlawful. Both the Crown Prosecution Service and the Home Secretary failed to acknowledge the unlawfulness - as result of which Senator Pinochet is held in custody for the sole purpose of legitimising this wholly unlawful process from the start."
Mr Nicholls told the court that Gen Pinochet was arrested at the London Clinic in Devonshire Place, near Harley Street, on a provisional extradition warrant that alleged he was responsible for the murders of Spanish citizens in Chile between September 11th, 1973, and December 31st, 1983, when he was the Chilean head of state. It claims the crimes fall within the jurisdiction of the fifth central magistrates court of the National Court of Madrid.
Isabel Allende, daughter of the late Chilean President Salvador Allende, said in Santiago yesterday that it was "incredible, simply incredible" that Baroness Thatcher had defended Gen Pinochet.