Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said yesterday that he is awaiting a decision from Republican leadership on whether he will remain on the Intelligence Committee after relinquishing the gavel or leave the panel for a new assignment.

Speculation has mounted recently about Roberts’s future on Intelligence, where he and incoming Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) have long wrangled over a still-unfinished probe of the Bush administration’s conduct during the run-up to war. Roberts is considering leaving the Intelligence panel’s fierce partisanship behind and joining a committee where he could more directly help his home state, according to local media reports.

“I am perfectly willing and consider it a privilege to continue as [top Republican on the panel],” Roberts said yesterday. “On the other hand, if some other committee spot were to come open that would enable me to [work for Kansas interests],” a change in assignments would be foreseeable.

Where Roberts might land once Senate Minority Leader-to-be Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his team announce their committee lineups is another much-discussed question. While Roberts could secure new benefits for Kansas during next year’s farm bill rewrite by reasserting his seniority on the Agriculture Committee, which he chaired in the 1990s, an Agriculture Committee spokesman said current Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) plans to remain as ranking member in the 110th Congress.

Roberts acknowledged “all sorts of rumors” about the coming GOP committee shuffle but said that the outcome was still unresolved. Senate Republicans aim to release their committee rosters for the next session by Dec. 15, a GOP leadership aide said.

Decisions about the Intelligence panel could play into the ranking-member race at the Environment and Public Works Committee, where departing Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) is being challenged by term-limited Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.). Senior to Inhofe on the environment committee, Warner is also an ex officio member of Intelligence, making him a potential contender for that panel’s ranking membership. A Warner spokesman declined to comment on next year’s committee assignments.

Others in line to become ranking member should Roberts decide to depart Intelligence include Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who spent this Congress not chairing a committee for the first time in more than a decade, and Kit Bond (R-Mo.). Hatch and Bond co-wrote an “additional views” supplement with Roberts that was released alongside the Intelligence committee’s 2004 Phase I report.