US says Iran must act after 'positive' talks

US:The US and Iran yesterday ended a 27-year diplomatic rupture with four hours of talks between their ambassadors in Baghdad.

During the meeting, in the Green Zone office of Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, US ambassador Ryan Crocker and Iranian ambassador Hassan Kazemi-Qomi focused on stabilising Iraq.

Mr Crocker said afterwards that Iran and the US agreed broadly that there should be a "secure, stable, democratic, federal Iraq in control of its own security, at peace with its neighbours".

However, he insisted that Iran needed to form an action policy consonant with its declaratory policy.

He said the Quds Brigades of Tehran's Revolutionary Guards should cease training and arming Iraqi militant groups attacking US forces.

Since early this year the US has insisted that Iran has been providing Iraqi insurgents with explosive charges which have destroyed armoured vehicles and killed scores of US soldiers.

Mr Crocker said he had rejected the Iranian assertion that "the coalition presence was an occupation and that the effort to train and equip Iraqi security forces had been inadequate to the challenges faced".

He argued that US forces were in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government and that Washington had invested billions of dollars in training and equipping Iraqi forces.

His Iranian counterpart, he revealed, had proposed a "trilateral security mechanism" involving Iraqi, US and Iranian officials.

The talks had been positive and Washington would consider further meetings, he added.

While the Iranian ambassador did not comment publicly on the meeting, foreign minister Manouchehr Motakki, speaking at a gathering of Gulf states in Tehran, reiterated Iran's position that the US should announce a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, a step which the Bush administration refuses to take.

He also blamed the sectarian conflict in Iraq on foreign intervention and mismanagement.

The Baghdad talks took place against a background of rising tensions between Washington and Tehran.

While levelling charges against Iran for fomenting violence in Iraq, Washington is seeking to strengthen sanctions against Tehran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, which the US sees as the first stage in the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

Reports from Tehran indicate that sanctions are undermining Iran's economy.

The US, which has deployed two aircraft carrier groups to the Arabian Sea, recently staged naval exercises in the Gulf at the same time Iran was carrying out similar exercises.

Finally, US forces in Iraq hold five Iranian officials suspected of aiding Iraqi militias. They were seized in January from an office in the Kurdish city of Irbil. Iraq's Kurds have long-standing relations with Iran.

Tehran rejects any suspension of its nuclear project and charges the US with spying and encouraging dissident Iranian ethnic groups to engage in subversion.

Iran recently arrested half a dozen dual Iranian-US citizens who were visiting Tehran and Iranians with connections to US non-governmental organisations.