WASHINGTON, September 30 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Launching a grass-roots initiative to raise up to $75 million to prevent President George W. Bush from being re-elected, famous billionaire George Soros said Washington would only stop pursuing “extremist” policies if there was a change in the White House.

"It is only possible if you have a regime change in the United States - in other words if President Bush is voted out of power,” Soros told BBC Radio 4's United Nations Or Not? Program Monday, September 29.

"I am very hopeful that people will wake up and realize that they have been led down the garden path, that actually 11 September has been hijacked by a bunch of extremists to put into effect policies that they were advocating before such as the invasion of Iraq," Soros said, according to the BBC online news service.

The Hungarian-born philanthropist, whose Foundations Network has given $1bn around the world to various causes to help tackle poverty and disease, said that there was a "false ideology" behind the policies of the Bush administration.

The U.S. actions in the build-up to the invasion of Iraq, he contended, was evidence of an extremist element in the Bush administration.

"There is a group of - I would call them extremists - who have the following belief: that international relations are relations of power, not of law, that international law will always follow what power has achieved," he said.

"And therefore [they believe] the United States being the most powerful nation on earth should impose its power, impose its will and its interests on the world and it should do it looking after itself,” he said in statements carried by the BBC.

"But America being really the dominant power to be in the grips of such an extremist ideology is very dangerous for the world and that is my major concern."

Soros also was once a supporter of regime change in Iraq, but now believes that the removal of President Saddam Hussein will be counted in history as one of Bush's biggest foreign policy failures.

"Probably President Chirac would not disagree with this philosophy but he is not so powerful - so I am not so worried about what France is doing," Soros said, referring to France's opposition to the invasion.

However, he added that he felt the rift between the U.S. and the United Nations over the invasion had in fact strengthened the U.N. rather than weakened it.

"I think there is a good chance that the U.S. will yet turn to a greater extent to the United Nations because they are now discovering that it is extremely painful and certainly costly to go it alone so in the end the outcome may be to strengthen the United Nations."

The United States is seeking approval for the resolution which would authorize the deployment of a multinational force in Iraq, thus lightening Washington's financial and military burden in the unstable country.

Soros was, however, critical of the U.N. for what it sees as its inability to function well as a collective of states, the BBC said.

"The United Nations is not an organization that is terribly effective in promoting open society because it is an association of states... states always put their national interests ahead of the common interest.

"So it is not a very effective organization for changing conditions inside states."

Soros has a history of donating great sums of money to areas in need around the world - but only once has he done this through the U.N. to Bosnia, according to the BBC.

"We do interfere in the internal affairs of states, but based on supporting people inside the country who take a certain stance.

"We have actually been quite effective in bringing about democratization, democratic regime change in Slovakia, Croatia and Yugoslavia, but that's by helping civil society in those countries to mobilize," he was quoted as saying.

Soros is highly critical of much government bureaucracy, preferring to make his donations directly to those in need as much as possible, the BBC said.

Soros is launching a grass-roots initiative that seeks to raise up to $75 million to prevent Bush from being re-elected.

He has committed an unprecedented $10 million of his own money to "Americans Coming Together," or ACT, which plans to mobilize voters in 17 states regarded as battlegrounds in the 2004 election, the National Post reported.

Soros, known as "the man who broke the Bank of England," says he wants to be known as the man who brought down the government of President Bush, according to the Canadian newspaper.

In 1992, Soros reportedly garnered $1 billion in one day of currency trading that caused the value of the British pound to plummet.

"I feel that the current U.S. administration is abusing its power by trying to increase that power instead of using it to try and create a more peaceful and equitable world," he said in a June interview, according to the Post.

Soros contends the administration, particularly Attorney General John Ashcroft along with Bush, has used the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to expand its authority and erode civil liberties.

"You pass the USA Patriot Act without proper discussion," said Soros in a PBS television interview this month.

"Anyone who opposed it was accused of giving aid and comfort to the terrorists. I think we've gone off the rail in this country. Lawmakers didn't even get a copy of the bill. They couldn't even read it before it was passed," he said.

The Act allows the FBI to secretly obtain a variety of information about ordinary Americans, including medical records, reading habits, religious affiliations and Internet surfing.