Iranian envoy visits Iraq, vows support

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iran's foreign minister made a historic trip to Baghdad yesterday, pledging to secure his country's borders to stop militants from entering Iraq and saying the "situation would have been much worse" if Tehran were supporting the insurgency as the United States has claimed.

Also yesterday, three Islamic clerics — a Shiite and two Sunnis — were shot and killed in Baghdad, police said, a day after Iraq's prime minister vowed to use an "iron fist" to end sectarian violence. Seventeen other Iraqis were also killed yesterday: two Iraqi officials in separate Baghdad drive-by shootings, six truck drivers delivering supplies to U.S. forces north of the capital, a former member of Saddam's Baath party and his three grown sons, three Mosul police officers and two soldiers in Baghdad.

Iranian envoy Kamal Kharrazi's trip was the highest-level visit by an official from any of Iraq's six neighboring countries since Saddam Hussein's ouster two years ago.

Kharrazi, who held talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, President Jalal Talabani and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on a day of deepening sectarian violence, vowed his country was committed to supporting Iraq's political and economic reconstruction and would do all it could to improve security. "We believe securing the borders between the two countries means security to the Islamic Republic of Iran," Kharrazi said.

Zebari said militants have infiltrated from Iran into Iraq, "but we are not saying that they are approved by the Iranian government."

New British Defense Secretary John Reid also visited Iraq yesterday, traveling to Baghdad and Basra. The stream of visitors is aimed at shoring up the new Iraqi leadership caught in a surge of violence that has killed more than 470 people since the new government was announced April 28.

Ties between neighboring Iraq and Iran improved after the ouster of Saddam, who led an eight-year war against Iran during the 1980s in which more than 1 million people died. Relations remained cool after that war, with Iran supporting anti-Saddam groups and the former Iraqi leader hosting the Mujahedeen Khalq, an Iranian militia that fought the Shiite religious regime in Tehran.

But since the U.S.-led invasion swept Saddam from power, Iraq's majority Shiite Muslim community has risen to power and worked to build close ties with Iran.

Iran, however, has been accused of supporting insurgents in Iraq to destabilize reconstruction efforts by the United States, which regards Tehran as a terrorism sponsor bent on producing nuclear weapons. Iran denies both claims.

The Iranian envoy's visit comes at a time of spiraling violence fueled by foreign extremists and rival groups of Sunnis and Shiites.

Shiite cleric Sheik Mouwaffaq al-Husseini was killed yesterday in a drive-by shooting by unknown gunmen in Baghdad's western Jihad neighborhood, police Capt. Taleb Thamer said. The two Sunni clerics, Sheik Hassan al-Naimi and Sheik Talal Nayef, were kidnapped Sunday from different mosques by men wearing Iraqi army uniforms, according to the police officer and Sheik Hamed al-Khazraji, a Sunni spokesman.