Bush fires off warning to China over giving Iraq military aid
President Bush says he is disturbed that China is helping Iraq build a more sophisticated defence network.
The US president was responding to reports that last week's US-British air strikes were prompted by Chinese workers helping to lay fiber-optic cables around Baghdad.
Mr Bush says an appropriate response has been issued to Beijing over the presence of Chinese people in Iraq.
He has also expressed satisfaction with the effectiveness of last week's air strikes, which targeted more than 20 Iraqi air defence radars and command-and-control facilities linked to air defences.
But Pentagon officials say less than half the targeted radars were damaged.
Mr Bush said: "We had two missions. One was to send a clear message to Saddam. The other was to degrade the capacity of Saddam to injure our pilots. I believe we succeeded in both those missions."
US and British pilots have been monitoring Iraq's air space since shortly after the 1991 Gulf War.
Administration officials believe China's role in assisting Iraq to strengthen its air defences is a violation of UN Security Council sanctions placed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of the neighbouring emirate.
Iraq has denied that it has imported workers from China. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao says he has no information to confirm the allegations.
