FRANKFURT, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Russia's former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov warned Washington on Friday against launching a ground war in Afghanistan or broadening its retaliation for last month's attacks to other states.

"Russia supports the action of the United States in Afghanistan but I don't believe in widening this action," Primakov told Reuters in an interview at the Frankfurt Bookfair, where he was promoting his new book "In the shadow of power -- politics for Russia."

"If the United States has in mind moving beyond the borders of Afghanistan I don't believe it will bring good results. It could lead people to turn against the action," Primakov, an adviser to President Vladimir Putin and Russia's top Arab specialist, said.

Washington has left open the possibility of broadening its military action beyond Afghanistan to other states it considers hostile, including possibly Iraq. Primakov made an unsuccessful last-minute peace mission to Baghdad in 1990 before the Gulf War.

Primakov, foreign minister and then prime minister for a few months under former President Boris Yeltsin, said Washington should learn from Russia's long, bloody war in Afghanistan.

"I don't think that if the United States launched a land operation it would be successful. Nobody can control Afghanistan," he said.

Primakov, whose ties with the Middle East date back four decades to when he worked in the region as a foreign correspondent, welcomed comments by U.S. President George W. Bush backing the eventual creation of a Palestinian state.

"I believe now is the time to settle the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel," he said. "Yasser Arafat has done much to prevent anti-American demonstrations which creates a good environment for new efforts in the Middle East.

"We shouldn't concentrate just on retaliation but on healing the ground that is fertile for these attacks and healing the sickness in the Middle East," he said.

The United States, Russia, the European Union, the United Nations, Egypt and Jordan should all intensify their efforts to drive forward the peace process in the region, he said.

Primakov also welcomed a new attitude in the West since the September 11 attacks towards Russia's war in Chechnya, saying separatists there had close ties to Osama bin Laden, the Saudi- born dissident who Washington blames for the suicide hijackings.

"They are connected to bin Laden financially and have received arms from him and trained in Afghanistan," he said.

Primakov called for the U.N. to expand its efforts in fighting terrorism and proposed a new international charter that would allow for the destruction of terrorist networks, a clamp down on their finances as well as international rules on extraditing suspects.

Peacekeeping forces under U.N. command should be allowed to do more in this fight, albeit within limits, Primakov said.

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