WASHINGTON, Sept 16: The top White House economic adviser estimates that Washington may have to spend between 100 billion and 200 billion dollars to wage war against Iraq, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Lawrence Lindsey, head of the White House’s National Economic Council, projected the “upper bound” of war costs at between one percent and two percent of US gross domestic product, or between 100 billion dollars and 200 billion dollars.

The tally is considerably higher than a preliminary, private Pentagon estimate of about 50 billion dollars, the Journal reported.

Lindsey said he believed it unlikely that the hostilities would push the United States into recession or a sustained period of inflation.

But at the same time, he doubted that the additional spending would give the economy much of a lift either.

“Government spending tends not to be that stimulative,” he told the newspaper. “Building weapons and expending them isn’t the basis of sustained economic growth.”

While the cost of a military strike might seem prohibitive, Lindsey told the Journal it was a question of perspective: weighing the cost of war against the removal of a “huge drag on global economic growth for a foreseeable time in the future — there’s no comparison,” he said.

On a similar note, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan last week said he doubted a war would lead to recession because of a reduced dependence of the US economy on oil.—AFP