The admission came one day after the US Special Envoy for Afghanistan, Mr. Zalmay Khalilzad disclosed that Washington had submitted to Tehran substantial documents concerning both the presence in Iran of Al-Qa’eda and Taleban in the one hand and Iranian intrigues and interferences in Afghanistan interior affaires on the other.

"Those arrested are nationals of Arab, African and European countries, with some carrying French, British, Belgian, Spanish and Dutch passports", the source said, adding the embassies of the mentioned countries have been notified of the arrests.

"Investigation has been launched to shed light on their identity and their possible links to terror groups", the source said, in a rebuke to the regime’s Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi who only two days ago had once again accused Washington of making "unsubstantiated and undocumented" charges against the Islamic Republic.

Taken by surprise, the senior spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry Hamid-Reza Asefi on Thursday described the information received from the United States as "old, false and inaccurate that could not be used".

He also rejected Mr. Khalizad’s alleged Iranian interference in Afghanistan and helping Al-Qa’eda terrorists to escape using Iranian territory.

In an interview with the Persian and Poshtoo service of the BBC, the Afghan-born Khalizad had said that Washington had passed the information directly to Iranian diplomats during multilateral talks on Afghanistan".

"Those arrested have travelled the 750-kilometer distance between Pakistani city of Quetta and Iranian border city of Mir-Javeh in (southeastern) Sistan and Baloochestan province without being stopped at all by Pakistan's security forces" the same official told IRNA.

"Initial questioning of the infiltrators has indicated that no key member with links to Taleban or Al-Qa’eda exists among them", the source indicated, reiterating that none of the detainees would be handed over to the United States, "as Tehran and Washington had not diplomatic relations".

President George W. Bush warned Iran last month not to harbour any Al-Qa’eda "murderers" and said any found on its territory should be handed over to the US.

In his State of the Union address ten days ago, President Bush also accused Iran, Iraq and North Korea of constituting an "axis of evil" through their efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction that could be used by terrorist groups.

According to the information gathered from those arrested, most of them entered Afghanistan after the US military operations in Afghanistan, started on 7 October, in retaliation for the deadly 11 September attacks in New York and in Washington D.C.

However, senior Iranian officials blamed Pakistan for the "infiltration" of Al-Qa’eda and Taleban into Iran, saying that Pakistani police and army were encouraging Taleban and Al-Qaeda fugitives to flee into Iran.

"The Islamic Republic has no security problems in its borders with Afghanistan, but faces troubles in its long borders with Pakistan in the absence of complete controls by that country's border guards", the Iranian unidentified source further said.

The minister said about 20,000 people who had entered Afghanistan through Pakistan with the help of the Taleban were now "scattered in the region" and that many were crossing into southeast Iran from Pakistan.

Iranian sources confirmed the accusations, saying that members of Al-Qa’eda pay smugglers to take them to the Persian Gulf and other destinations on the north, using their routes across Iran.

In his interview, Mr. Khalizad overtly accused "people around Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i", the staunchly anti-American leader of the Islamic Republic and the revolutionary Guards of helping the Taleban who are hidden in Afghanistan in order to use them against the interim government of Mr. Hamid Karzai.

He reiterated that Iranian Revolutionary Guards were arming local Afghan commanders, providing them with money and equipments to mount operations against the Afghan central authority.

Though Iran adamantly rejected the charges, but in the Majles (parliament) and in the press, some voices confirmed the accusations, asking the authorities to explain why the Iranian General Consul in the Afghan city of Heart was a high-ranking officer of the Al-Qods Unit and not a diplomat?

He said what the Bush Administration was after in Iran was to "back the reformists and help the Iranian people’s desire for democracy and freedom".

"America does not intend to attach Iran, but hope it could bring positive changes there, help Iran to play a positive and progressive role both in the region and in the world, to improve its economic situation and respond to Iranian people’s genuine aspiration for prosperity and democracy", he added in the interview.

He said the reason Mr. Khameneh'i and the hard-liners around him were trying to destabilise the Karzai’s pro-American, pro-Western government was due to the fact that they see the recent changes in Kabol as menacing their interests.

Not only they indirectly confirmed that the Revolutionary Guard was involved in anti-Karzai activities in Afghanistan, but also had "probably" a hand in smuggling weapons for the Palestinian Authority, another accusation levelled by both Washington and Tel-Aviv against Iranian conservatives.

"On the surface, the impression is that President Bush’s lumping Iran with Iraq and North Korea into the axis of evil has benefited the conservatives, forcing the so-called reformers to also adopt a staunch anti-American attitude. But the reality is that it actually made the Iranian public opinion become aware of the threat the conservatives and the very person of Mr. Khameneh'i presents for the nation, commented one Iranian political analyst, adding: "A Romanian scenario is very likely", referring to the way the former Romanian dictator Ceausescu was toppled. ENDS IRAN AFQAN TERRORISTS 15202