US general says Taliban receiving Iranian arms

Washington: US-led coalition forces in southern Afghanistan recently intercepted Iranian-made weapons that were being shipped to fighters for the Taliban, historically regional rivals of Tehran, the Pentagon's top general said on Tuesday.

Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the munitions, which included mortars and C-4 explosives, were captured within the past month near Kandahar, which serves as the military and administrative capital for the restive south. That region has been under renewed Taliban assault in recent months.

Accusation

The Bush administration repeatedly has accused Iran of supplying insurgents in Iraq with sophisticated weaponry, including armour-penetrating explosive devices.

Pace said it remained unclear who shipped the arms, but that markings on the explosives enabled US intelligence to identify them as Iranian-made.

"It is not as clear in Afghanistan which Iranian entity is responsible," Pace told a group of military writers. "We do not know, with the same clarity we know in Iraq, who was delivering those weapons or who were involved."

In Iraq, US officials have accused the Quds Force, the international arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, but have said it remained unclear whether Quds operatives were acting at the behest of senior Iranian officials in Tehran.

Benign influence

The Bush administration has acknowledged that Iran has been active inside Afghanistan, but administration officials have described the influence as benign and limited to the western provinces around Herat.

Historically, the Shiite Muslim government in Tehran has viewed the Taliban as archrivals and nearly went to war with the Taliban in 1998, when the Kabul government captured and killed dozens of Iranians in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif