BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese military experts warned the United States that building a missile defense shield would inflict tremendous political costs on Washington and spark a Sino-American conflict over Taiwan.

The panel of authorities at the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Academy of Military Science said placing Taiwan under the missile umbrella would create a U.S. military alliance with the self-governing island China claims as its territory.

The official China Daily quoted Luo Yuan, a senior strategist at the PLA academy, as saying deploying its proposed National Missile Defense (NMD) and Theater Missile Defense (TMD) systems would have a ``tremendous'' political cost for the United States.

Repeating China's warning that building the system would trigger a new world arm race, he said in the five years it took to deploy the system, concerned states would build even more offensive weapons and leave the United States no safer.

Shielding Taiwan with the TMD, a regional version of the NMD, would create a ``de facto military alliance'' between Taipei and Washington that would upset Sino-U.S. relations, Luo said in a report published Wednesday.

``There is no reason for military conflict between China and the U.S. except on the question of Taiwan,'' said Luo, who defended China's right to deploy missiles against Taiwan.

Taiwan military experts said Tuesday China was increasing rapidly the quantity and quality of missiles in provinces facing the island, making it necessary for Taipei to spend more on anti-missile defenses.

China Dismisses Missile Threat

Luo and other PLA experts dismissed U.S. assertions that the goal of the two programs was to protect the United States and its troops and allies in Asia from missiles launched by hostile states such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

``Such excuses do not hold water,'' Luo said, apparently speaking before the publication in South Korean media of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's remarks acknowledging Pyongyang was selling missiles to Iran and Syria.

Staking out a more extreme position than Western or even Russian critics of the U.S. plan, Luo declared the proposed shield ``principally targets containing Russia and China.''

``The U.S. global strategy in Europe is to contain Russia's revival and in Asia to contain China's growth, and is to preserve U.S. hegemony in the world,'' Luo was quoted as saying.

President Clinton faces growing calls in the U.S. Congress and from national security specialists to delay making a decision on deploying the controversial $60 billion system to shoot down missiles until it has been more thoroughly tested.

Critics say NMD technology is flawed and will not be ready by its 2005 target date. Two of three U.S. attempts to shoot down missiles over the Pacific since last October have failed.

Defense Secretary William Cohen said last month Clinton would decide by early September whether to keep the controversial missile shield program on a fast track for 2005, but would leave it for his successor to decide whether and when to begin initial deployment.

Home Page