He would however have preferred to see the Iraqi leader brought before the courts, he said.

"The goal of these actions (by coalition forces) is to disarm Saddam Hussein's regime, but everything appears to indicate that this can only be done by going after the head of this regime, even if this means killing Saddam Hussein," he told reporters after a cabinet meeting.

On Monday, US warplanes dropped four satellite-guided bombs onto a building in central Baghdad after an intelligence tip suggested that Iraqi leaders, including the "great leader" and his sons Qussay and Uday, were inside.

On Tuesday, US President George W. Bush could not say whether Saddam was still alive.

"I don't know whether he survived," Bush said in Belfast.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen, whose country has contributed a corvette, a submarine and 160 crew to the US-led war effort, hailed "the progress made on the ground by the coalition forces".

He said he hoped that "Saddam Hussein's regime will realise that there is no point in continuing to fight and that he will give up, which would spare the Iraqi people a lot of suffering and loss."

Rasmussen stressed the importance of stabilizing the situation in Iraq "as soon as possible", and underlined that the international coalition "will have a decisive role to play in the first phase once the fighting is over, in order to prevent the country from falling into chaos."

The Danish government supports the idea that the "UN play a central role in post-war Iraq in the reconstruction of the country", but only "after the coalition forces have stabilized the situation", he said.

SPACE.WIRE