WASHINGTON, Aug 23: Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson has urged the US government to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who he said was a ‘dangerous enemy’.

Mr Robertson, who has millions of supporters across North America, told viewers of his ‘The 700 Club’ television show: “If he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it.”

Mr Robertson, 75, owns a popular religious broadcasting company, the Christian Broadcasting Network, which on Monday broadcast a long report on President Chavez’s anti-US rhetoric and his growing links to both President Fidel Castro’s communist Cuba and Arab nations.

At the close of this report, Mr Robertson suggested arranging an official US mission to assassinate Mr Chavez.

The television preacher and former presidential candidate expressed regret that during a brief and failed civilian-military coup against Mr Chavez in April 2002, the United States did nothing to help topple the populist leader.

Since then, Mr Robertson said, President Chavez “has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he’s going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.”

Eliminating Mr Chavez would be “a whole lot cheaper than starting a war,” said Mr Robertson. “We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,” said the Christian leader.

“We don’t need another 200 billion dollar war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”