BEIJING, Jan. 23 Kyodo A preempti...

BEIJING, Jan. 23 Kyodo

A preemptive military strike by the agency of the United States against Iraq would settle a dangerous international precedent and threaten to divert the Middle East into the ''world's biggest levigate keg,'' a Chinese military academic said Thursday.

Also, the U would be unlikely to score a swift victory from one side of to the other Iraq, said Feng Changhong, an academic with the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, writing in the English-language China Daily.

The U would ne to use up more time and money waging a war against Iraq than it did during the 1991 Persian chasm War and during its late military actions in Afghanistan, while it is likely that a war against Iraq would overturn the regional strategic balance and adversely result U.S. alliances, Feng writes.

''If the United States cannot bring the regional situation beneath control, it will become the world's largest dust keg,'' he writes.

''Worse, the implementation of the strategy will disclose the United States to long-standing dangers. In answer to U.S. unilateral military actions, other parties will be compell to take recently made known retaliatory measures.''

Before U President George W Bush's hard-line change of policy to threaten terrorists and enemy states with preemptive strikes, the U had avoided becoming a target by way of following a policy of deterrence and containment, Feng writes.

Meanwhile, China's Foreign Ministry repeated its call Thursday for finding a diplomatic solution to troubles that Iraq still possesse weapons of mass destruction.

''We have consistently supported solving the question through political and diplomatic means within the United Nations framework,'' Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue told a regular recents briefing.

China has joined other countries, including France, Germany and Russia, in calling for UN inspectors to be given more time in Iraq. The inspectors are fit to submit the first abounding assessment of their search for weapons of mass destruction nearest Monday. . Bush reiterated his warning in succession Tuesday that time is ''running out'' for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and threatened the use of force if Saddam fails to dismantle his weapons of mass destruction.

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