NEW YORK --- President Clinton has ordered the Defense, State and Justice departments to devise plans for the arrest and trial of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader alleged to be responsible for the death of perhaps a million Cambodians in the 1970s, The New York Times reported Thursday.

From 1975 to 1979, Pol Pot, who is now in his 70s and in poor health, turned Cambodia into a vast labor camp. Millions of Cambodians, especially city-dwellers, were driven from their homes and forced to work in the fields under primitive conditions.

Pol Pot labeled anyone with money or education an enemy of the revolution, and much of the middle class was killed during his four-year reign of terror or starved to death, the Times said.

The Khmer Rouge were toppled by a Vietnamese invasion in 1979, but they resumed their guerrilla struggle in the jungle, where they have remained for two decades.

Pol Pot and other Khmer Rouge leaders are said to be in hiding in the Cambodian jungle only a few miles across the border with Thailand, the Times said.

The paper said the Thai government has suggested it would be willing to take Pol Pot into custody as long as the United States agreed to spirit him out of Thailand within hours of his capture.

While administration officials cautioned that there was no guarantee that the ailing Khmer Rouge leader would be apprehended, they said Clinton issued a written order Monday to organize logistics for Pol Pot's capture and trial, the Times said.

Under one plan being discussed within the administration, an American military plane would take Pol Pot from Thailand to a third country, possibly the Netherlands, where international tribunals are prosecuting war crimes carried out in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the paper said.

A military official said the Pentagon had drawn up a list of interim sites where Pol Pot might be held until a location for the trial was selected. These include the Northern Marianas Islands and Wake Island --- both American territories in the Pacific --- or the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Times said.

"We've had many false alarms before with the Khmer Rouge, but this may be our best chance to get Pol Pot,'' a Clinton administration official involved in the planning told the Times. "We're not going to be caught unprepared if he's made available to us.''

Another American official said: "if we don't get Pol Pot this time, he may die before we ever have the chance to bring him to justice.''

Under Clinton's order, the Times said, the State Department has been directed to oversee negotiations with Thailand, the Netherlands and other nations that might be involved in the apprehension and trial.

The Justice Department has been asked to review the legal authority that would be needed under international law for the United States to become involved in the detention of Pol Pot, the paper said.

Western diplomats told the paper that prosecutors at the international tribunals in The Hague had already tentatively agreed to organize a trial for Pol Pot for crimes against humanity, as long as the U.N. Security Council empowers them to oversee the prosecution.

The United States, France and other nations had already begun drafting a Security Council resolution to deal with such a trial, the Times reported.

© Reuters Ltd.