Governments in the region that are allied with the United States rushed Thursday to congratulate the winner of the US presidential elections. And business leaders said his promotion of free trade bodes well for jobs in India, China and Japan.

Environmentalists, however, warned of an environmental "disaster" combining increased growing air pollution and worsening flooding unless the US radically altered its attitude to climate change.

In Hong Kong, the China spokesman for the environmentalist group Greenpeace told AFP the re-election of Bush had dealt a blow to hopes of pressure on the region's major polluters to slow the rate of climate change.

Without that pressure, air pollution would in Asia worsen and flooding would increase, said the spokesman, Martin Baker, adding that "Bush had a terrible track record" on the issue during his first term.

"The impact of climate change will accelerate. Glacier retreat means there would be more flooding in Indonesia, the Indian subcontinents and China's east coast. It will cause serious disaster in Asia," he said.

Terrorism experts meanwhile warned that unless US foreign policy changed, particularly in the Middle East, the United States risked fanning the flames of Muslim insurgencies in the region.

If policy does not change, Bush's re-election will mean that "the war on terror will continue to be complicated and problematic, given the huge anti-Bush sentiment that we are seeing in the Muslim world, and particularly in this part of the world," said Andrew Tan, a security analyst with Singapore's Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies.

Tan told AFP he believed Bush would learn from his "errors" and pursue a more concensus-driven approach in his second term.

"... the second Bush administration will I think gradually move beyond unilateralism and the one-dimensional approach to a more multi-dimensional and multilateral approach," he said.

But continuing such policies would drive more Muslims into the ranks of militant groups, warned Clive Williams, director of terrorism studies at Australian National University.

"I think from Al-Qaeda's point of view they would think Bush's re-election is quite a positive development because the mistake the Americans made in going into Iraq has opened up a lot of opportunities for them," he said.

The president could benefit from working more closely with the more US-friendly governments which now rule in Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as its key strategic allies in power in Pakistan and Afghanistan, analysts told

In Pakistan and India, experts agreed that the re-election of the US president would probably increase the pressure on both Islamabad and Delhi for more peace moves between the two countries.

"There will be a greater push from the US for peace in South Asia," said Rasheed Khan, senior research analyst at Islamabad's Policy Research Institute.

And "Bush ... will keep US pressure on India and Pakistan to arrive at a peaceful settlement in the South Asian region," agreed Probir Purkayastha, political science professor at Delhi University.

Outside South Asia, one of the early diplomatic challenges facing Bush's new secretary of state will be North Korea and here analysts expected Bush to show some flexibility in resolving a stand-off over the Stalinist regime's nuclear ambitions.

"I expect some flexibility because the Bush administration cannot afford to allow this situation in Northeast Asia to become more tense or to threaten a military action," said Edward Reed, the Seoul-based representative of the Asia Foundation.

Pyongyang snubbed a fourth round of six-nation talks scheduled for September, citing Washington's "hostile policy" among its reasons, but analysts said Bush - already stretched in Iraq - could not afford military engagement in the region.

"If North Korea keeps refusing to abandon its nuclear programme, Bush would shift to a 'Plan B' focusing on heaping multi-pronged pressure on Pyongyang," said Yun Duk-min, a nuclear arms expert at Seoul's state-run Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security.

On China itself, sinologists said the Bush administration would continue to view Beijing as a strategic threat, although as a major trading partner of the US there was unlikely to be any drastic policy shift in Washington.

"The Bush people have a bit of a Cold War mentality and think that whatever the political regime is in China it will be always a potential threat," said Ding Yifan, deputy director of the Institute of World Development, a Beijing-based think tank under the State Council.

Analysts said although the Republican party talked tough on the Taiwan issue, the Bush administration was pragmatic enough to avoid souring relations through provocation.

Meanwhile in India, trade experts said Bush's support for free trade would help boost India's already booming outsourcing sector and Indian shares jumped to a fresh six-month high as investors welcomed his re-election.

"Investors see Bush as a free trade practitioner," said an equity analyst at a foreign brokerage.

Democratic candidate John Kerry had criticised US firms for moving service departments, such as call centres, to India and allegedly taking jobs from US workers.

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