A US-led attack on Iraq will hurt India in the short term, a strategic affairs expert said on Monday.

However, the offensive is expected to bring long-term benefits once the oil prices drop, George Friedman, Chairman of stratfor.com, a private intelligence service, said.

He said India and China have expanded oil consumption and are sensitive to the current high prices besides outstanding contracts on Iraqi projects that may not filled by a new regime that replaces Saddam Hussein.

He said Iraq's bilateral trade with India, a major importer of Iraqi oil under the United Nations approved oil-for-food programme, stands at $1.1 billion.

With the debate on whether to attack Iraq getting shriller in the American media, the greatest beneficiary of the victory on Baghdad will be the US itself, he said.

The war will establish a US 'imperium' in West Asia, said Friedman.

He said: "The conquest of Iraq will not be a minor event in history. It will represent the introduction of a new imperial power in West Asia and a redefinition of regional geopolitics based on that power.

"The United States will move from being an outside power in influencing events through coalitions, to a regional power that is able to operate effectively on its own."

'Countries like Saudi Arabia' will not enjoy 'living in a new and quite unpleasant world', as with Iraqi oil in hand, US dependence on Jeddah may end, he said.

Echoing the views in The Washington Post, Robert D Novak said the 'imperial mission' of the US in Iraq 'has staunch proponents in the Bush administration...'

Not all Republicans, however, share that vision, he said. After pondering over the presentation of Secretary of State Colin Powell's indictment of Saddam before the UN Security Council, Novak said, one Conservative Republican prominent in Washington's think-tank culture e-mailed a friend his concern about a US strategy for 'remaking the entire' West Asia.

"It's not that I care one whit whether or not Iraq is a crummy little dictatorship, but I do care that once we cross the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, we may have started down the road to a Pax Americana through an American imperium from which there is no return," he wrote.

Whether or not it is desirable, Novak said, taking up this burden would strain America's capacity. Senior Republican Senators note the government's difficulty in dealing simultaneously with Iraq, the North Korean crisis and nation-building in Afghanistan.