Iran spurns US over terrorist comments

Meeting Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the presidential palace in Kabul, Mr Ahmadinejad responded to US Defence Secretary Robert Gates's earlier claim that Iran was "playing a double game" by improving relations with Mr Karzai while also supporting the Taliban's resistance to the US occupation of the country.

"I believe that it is those who are themselves now fighting militants in Afghanistan who are 'playing a double game'," Mr Ahmadinejad asserted.

"They themselves created terrorists and now they're saying that they are fighting terrorists," he added, referring to US military and political support for Afghan rebels who resisted the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Mr Ahmadinejad emphasised that, despite US claims, Iran supported the Afghan government and added that "it makes no sense" for Iran's Shi'ite government to support the Sunni Muslim Taliban movement, which in the past has received strong backing from Saudi Arabia's fundamentalist Wahhabist rulers, who in turn are strongly supported by the US.

Mr Karzai pointed out that, despite the US occupation, Iranian teachers, doctors and engineers were working on reconstruction projects throughout the country and stressed that "our brother nation Iran is helping to bring peace and security to Afghanistan so that both our countries will be secure.

"We don't want anyone to use our soil against our neighbours," he said.

Mr Ahmadinejad added that he thought the best way to fight terrorists was not on the battlefield, but through the use of intelligence which did not result in the death of civilians.

"It is not possible to bring civilisation to Afghanistan by the gun and the bomb," he declared, charging the US and Britain instead with supporting the insurgent Jundallah group in Iran in an attempt to undermine an elected government.

But emphasising that Iranian security forces had captured Jundallah leader Abdulmalik Rigi through an intelligence operation, Mr Ahmadinejad pointed out that "Iran did not kill any civilians while arresting him."