Iran denies meddling in Iraq's future

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran rejected U.S. accusations that it is interfering in Iraq and called Thursday for the United Nations to run an interim government in the country.

Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters that Iran has no intention of backing Iraq's Shiite Muslims, thousands of whom staged anti-U.S. demonstrations in the holy city of Karbala on Wednesday.

"They are our religious brothers," Kharrazi said of Iraqi Shiites, who are of the same Islamic sect as the majority in Iran.

"We welcome true democracy and a government run by the people in our neighbor country, but we won't support one specific party," Kharrazi added.

The American in charge of rebuilding Iraq, Jay Garner, said Thursday that the demonstrations against the United States had been influenced by Iran.

"Those are well organized. I think what you find in that is a lot of Iranian influence," Garner said in Baghdad.

The United States has said that Iranian agents have crossed into Iraq to promote friendly Shiite clerics in Basra, Karbala and Najaf and advance Iran's interests. The agents are said to be members of the Iraqi Badr Brigade and Iran's hard-line Revolutionary Guards.

At a joint news conference with French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, Kharrazi rejected the U.S. accusations and called for the United Nations to take the "main role" in rebuilding Iraq.

"Only when a U.N. government takes control in Iraq will there be no more suspicions and accusations from other countries," Kharrazi said.

"There has to be a U.N. role so everybody will be allowed to participate fairly" in the reconstruction of Iraq, Kharrazi said. He accused the United States and Britain of "giving all the (reconstruction) projects to American contractors."

De Villepin, visiting Tehran to discuss postwar Iraq and a solution to the Palestinian and Israeli conflict, also stressed the pivotal role of the United Nations and expressed hope that France could contribute to the political, economic and social reconstruction of Iraq.

Iran regards itself as the leader of Shiite Islam, and many of those who live in Iraq have loudly demanded that its new government be formed on the frankly religious lines of the Islamic Republic of Iran, where clerics have ruled since the 1979 revolution overthrew a U.S.-backed monarchy.

Kharrazi made no such suggestion Thursday, noting instead that while almost all of Iran's 65-million people are Shiite, Iraq's more heterogeneous population may compel another course.

Of Iraq's estimated population of 24-million, 60 percent are Shiites, with most of the remaining 40 percent following the Sunni branch of Islam, which is dominant globally. Iraqi Sunnis are divided roughly equally between Arabs and ethnic Kurds, who under protection of U.S. warplanes established firmly secular administrations in the country's northern reaches in the previous 12 years.

The foreign minister's remarks were echoed by a senior official of the Iraqi exile group that is closest to Tehran.

Despite its name, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq insists it doesn't seek to establish a theocracy in Iraq along the lines of Iran's. The group, which Bush administration officials persuaded to join the U.S.-backed opposition in the leadup to the war, last year joined Kurdish and other opposition groups in calling for a federal system to be installed.

"We see no problem with this kind of system, especially if federalism preserves the unity of the Iraqi people," Mohammed Asadi, a council official, said in Tehran.

Asadi left open the possibility that Iraqis might choose a system grounded in religion. But he called Iran's model unsuitable for its neighbor.

- Information from the Associated Press, Washington Post and New York Times was used in this report.

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