Iran blames US for terror acts in Iraq

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (L) and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attend the second day of an international conference on Iraq yesterday in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Iraq's neighbours and world powers are gathering for a two-day conference to discuss how to bring an end to the deadly violence still plaguing the country. PHOTO: AFP

"To create a safe haven for those terrorists who try to turn Iraqi territory into a base for attacking Iraq's neighbours should be condemned," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said at the conference.

A spokesman for the Iranian delegation at the two-day conference on Iraq being held in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh confirmed that Mottaki was referring to the United States.

"Mr Mottaki was referring to countries which, like the United States, carry out acts of terrorism in Iraq," he told AFP.

"When the United States arrests five Iranian diplomats in Iraq, it is an act of terrorism," he said on condition of anonymity.

The US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, told reporters at the Pentagon that American forces were holding seven Iranians captured in Iraq as suspected members of the covert Qods Forces of Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

On January 11, US troops dropped from helicopters and stormed an Iranian liaison office in Arbil, the capital of the northern Iraqi Kurdistan region, and detained six employees, one of whom was later released.

The United States has said the men had links to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards and none of them held diplomatic passports.

It is not clear where and when the other two Iranian detainees mentioned by Petraeus were arrested.

The arrests came amid continued accusations by US commanders that Tehran is arming Shia militias and inciting anti-US attacks.

Tehran denies any involvement in the violence, while complaining that armed Iranian opposition groups such as Pejak -- a Kurdish guerrilla movement -- are allowed to operate from Iraqi soil.

In his speech Mottaki described the detention of the Iranians as a "brazen contravention of international conventions, the breach of Iraq's sovereignty and obvious dishonouring of the Iraqi people and government."

Mottaki's comments appeared to dash hopes of a rapprochement between Iran and the US, whose top diplomats had a brief exchange over lunch on Thursday.

Speculation had mounted in recent days over possible direct talks between Rice and Mottaki, in what would have been the highest-level bilateral discussions between the two countries since they broke off ties in 1980.