The principle economic trouble spots in the world this year will be China, Japan and the US, according to the opening session of the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
The meeting, held in the middle of the Swiss Alps, is being attended by over 1,000 chief executives, 250 cabinet ministers including 40 heads of state and over 300 debaters including Nobel prize winners, scientists, academics and artists.
According to Mr Richard Haass, director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institute in the US, the greatest potential destabiliser to the world economy is likely to be a near-term currency devaluation in China, where at the moment the yuan is pegged to the US dollar.
This will be exacerbated if the US Congress goes ahead with its threat to cancel any further monies to the International Monetary Fund, he said.
Mr Masashi Nishihara, professor of international relations at the National Defence Academy in Japan, said he also believed that a Chinese devaluation combined with problems in Indonesia had the potential to cause trouble.
If this were compounded by the beginning of fresh conflict in Iraq it would impact on oil prices and on the world economy to a far greater degree, he added.
While most countries would be affected those near Iraq, for example Eqypt and Israel would be suffer the most serious consequences, he added.
There was disagreement about the best way to manage the Iraqi problem. Mr Sergei Karaganov, chairman of the board of foreign and defence policy in Russia, warned that if Saddam Hussein were to be "taken out" it could result in the splitting up of Iraq which could lead to even greater tensions in the region.
