Secretary of State Colin Powell made Washington's displeasure clear to his Belgian counterpart Louis Michel in a January 23 telephone call in which he presented Washington's grievance and questioned the appropriateness of the remarks, the officials said.

"The secretary called to personally register our general complaint about the defense minister's comments," a State Department official said.

"He wasn't irate, but he wasn't particularly pleased either," said a second department official who, like the first, spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity.

"This isn't the kind of thing we think members of foreign governments should be opining about," the official said.

The officials could not say what Michel's response to Powell had been, but Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt has personally reprimanded Flahaut for the remarks, according to reports published earlier Friday in Brussels.

The comments were "unfortunate and inopportune," Verhofstadt said of Flahaut's remarks which appeared in an interview with the weekly lifestyle magazine, Humo, the Belga news agency said.

In the interview, Flahaut said: "If (I) were American, I would vote for the Democrats" in the November presidential elections in which the Republican Bush will seek a second term in office.

The Belgian foreign and defense ministries have declined to comment on the matter.

The spat risks reviving tensions between Washington and Brussels, which surged during the Iraq war as Belgium joined France and Germany in opposing the US-led conflict.

Ties were strained further when Belgium joined with France, Germany and Luxembourg in calling for the creation of a European military headquarters separate from NATO, prompting State Department spokesman Richard Boucher to publicly deride the four proponents as "chocolate makers."

Belgium also came under fire from Washington over controversial legislation that allowed lawsuits to filed in its courts for alleged war crimes worldwide.

Suits were filed against Bush, Powell and US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld under the law before the government, under heavy US pressure, watered it down, leading to the dismissal of the complaints.

Flahaut is likely to meet Rumsfeld at an informal meeting of NATO ministers in Munich next week but any conversation between the two is likely to be strained, according to the US officials.

Although they said Powell had been polite and restrained in his conversation with Michel, one official familiar with Belgian politics had particularly unkind words for Flahaut.

"Flahaut is someone who most observers of Belgium would charitably describe as an idiot," the official said.

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