"Hopefully the pressure of the free world will convince Mr Saddam Hussein to relinquish power," said President George W. Bush, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

"And should he choose to leave the country along with a lot of the other henchmen who have tortured the Iraqi people, we would welcome that of course," said the president.

Bush spoke during a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi but ahead of talks with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, which reports suggest has pressed for the exile option.

Saudi Arabia has denied reports it had advised Saddam to step down in order to avert a U.S.-led war and said it would not take part in war against Iraq.

“Contacts with Iraq by Saudi Arabia and all Arab countries have continued. We have not asked the Iraqi leadership to step down, maybe other Arab states did,” Prince Saud Al-Faisal told a press conference on December 25.

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Wednesday, January 29, that Washington was prepared to help arrange a place for Saddam and his family to live in exile if they agreed to leave Iraq.

"If he were to leave the country and take some of his family members with him and others in the elite who have been responsible for so much trouble during the course of his regime, we would, I am sure, try to help find a place for them to go," Powell said.

U.S. officials had said in the past that Washington would look favorably on Saddam's departure but had always refused to offer any assistance to efforts aimed at convincing the Iraqi leader to leave power voluntarily.

Powell's remarks came a week ahead of a highly anticipated briefing he is to give to the U.N. Security Council to lay out new evidence that Iraq is violating disarmament demands.

Immunity from prosecution would likely be a key demand if Saddam were to even consider exile.

Last week, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Britain would be ready to see Saddam offered immunity from prosecution if he agreed to relinquish power and go into exile.

"I think that, given that kind of choice, ... people would swallow hard and think 'well, it is better to provide some degree of immunity if it meant that we could resolve this peacefully and the Iraqi people could have put in a far better regime, which in due course could turn into a representative government,'" he said.

Even U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said some kind of immunity "would be a fair trade to avoid a war."

On Thursday, January 20, an influential Indian newspaper disclosed that the United States has offered Saddam Hussein an "escape route" exile to neutral India.

Quoting "highly placed government sources" in Delhi, India's influential newspaper, Times of India (TOI), said the proposal of India as a "neutral" territory for Saddam has been passed to the Iraqi regime by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

While no official response has been forthcoming from India, the London office of RAW, the Indian equivalent of the CIA, has been informed of the suggestion, the paper said.

"India is the only location Saddam can be exiled where he cannot be a potential threat unlike any other country," TOI quoted an official as saying.

Thus far, Saddam has shown no sign of any willingness to step down from power.