US: President Bush said he would order the assassination of Saddam Hussein, if US forces had "a clear shot," a suburban Chicago newspaper reported yesterday.
Mr Bush reportedly made the remark to Mr Peter Fitzgerald, the Republican senator for Illinois, during a private conversation aboard Air Force One last month, according to the Daily Herald.
Questioned by the paper's editorial board about how the United States might capture and remove Hussein from power without killing thousand of innocent Iraqi citizens, Senator Fitzgerald volunteered these comments: "I have personally talked to the President about this and if we had intelligence on where he was now, and we had a clear shot to assassinate him, we would probably do that."
Senator Fitzgerald made his comments on Monday.
"President Bush would probably sign an executive order repealing the executive order put in place by President Ford that forbids the assassination of foreign leaders."
When Herald reporters later asked Senator Fitzgerald to clarify whether President Bush said he would change US policy, he replied, "Yes, yes."
Possibly sensing that he had spoken out of turn, the one-term US senator added: "I don't want to betray any confidences of the President."
Meanwhile, US officials have warned a war against Iraq could force up to two million people to leave their homes and seek safe haven elsewhere.
"We're planning on two million internal refugees," said Mr Andrew Natsios, administrator of the US Agency for International Development.
However, Mr Elliott Abrams, special assistant to President Bush and director for Near East and North Africa at the National Security Council, cautioned that the figure reflected a "catastrophic" scenario and that the actual number could be much lower.
The two officials were taking part in a White House briefing aimed at revealing how Washington planned to address humanitarian issues in the event of US-led military intervention in Iraq.
"What we do is plan for the worst-case scenario," Mr Natsios pointed out. "But this is not necessarily going to happen."
He said Americans had devoted themselves over the past several months to a "massive pre-deployment of supplies" in the Gulf region that would enable them to bring assistance to the Iraqi population as fast as possible.
Mr Abrams stressed that currently 60 per cent of Iraqis "are completely dependent" on the UN-administered oil-for-food programme for their nutritional needs.
The programme allows Iraq to sell some oil to pay for purchases of food and medicine.