Riyadh, Saudi Arabia ? Saudi Arabia offered Tuesday to broker a quick peace pact between the United States and Iraq. Its foreign minister warned that the conflict could turn into bloody trench warfare like that of World War I.

The foreign minister, Saud al Faisal, said that he presented a peace offer to both sides but hadn’t received a formal response.

He declined to discuss the proposal’s details but said, “Let’s stop. Let’s assess. Let’s see if we can find a solution where both sides sacrifice a little for the good of everybody.”

In Washington, U.S. officials ruled out any kind of deal with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

“Peace proposals that leave current Iraqi leaders intact to once again threaten the international community, its neighbors and its own people would not be workable,” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

President Bush also has rejected the idea of letting Saddam go into exile.

“He had his chance to go into exile. I gave him a 48-hour ultimatum to leave the country so that we could disarm Iraq peacefully; he chose not to go into exile,” Bush said Sunday.

Saudi Arabia’s peace gesture reflected its desire to balance relations between its Arab neighbors and the United States, which helped protect it from a potential Iraqi invasion in 1990 and 1991.

Saudi Arabia has joined the rest of the Arab world in condemning the current U.S.-led invasion against the Iraqi regime, while quietly cooperating with the U.S. military.

Foreign Minister Saud, a member of the country’s royal family, warned that the war, still less than a week old, could stretch into the kind of “madness” that characterized World War I, with soldiers bogged down in trenches as both sides encountered massive losses. Iraqi resistance has dashed U.S. hopes for swift victory, he said.

Saudis have little tolerance for Saddam but deplore the war because it endangers Iraqi civilians and could destabilize the region.