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US denies Iran accusation on Iraqi Kurds
Washington (AFP) May 19, 2009 The US Defense Department on Tuesday rejected accusations from Iran that Washington was training "terrorists" in Iraq's Kurdish region and countered that Tehran was meddling in Iraq. "It's not to my knowledge that we are undertaking anything of that sort," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said when asked about allegations from Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The supreme leader on Tuesday charged the United States was plotting against Tehran on its western border, "spending money and handing out weapons to be used against the Islamic republic" of Iran. Morrell said the accusation was "terribly ironic given the fact that the Iranians continue to provide financing and weaponry to undermine our efforts to stabilize the governments in Iraq and Afghanistan." He said US forces "continue to find, especially in Iraq, caches of Iranian-supplied weapons." He said as recently as last week Iranian-manufactured explosives with shaped charges were found in Iraq and that it was likely the weapons had been brought into Iraq recently. "I find it ironic that the Iranians would be accusing us of meddling, when in fact over the last six, seven years in Iraq they have consistently been trying to undermine the peace and stability that we are trying to bring to the Iraqi people there." Iran's supreme leader said in a televised speech in the western Iranian province of Kordestan that the United States was paying money to young Kurds "to create mercenaries." "Americans have dangerous plans for (Iraqi) Kurdistan ... Their plans are not aimed at defending the Kurdish people, but they want to control them," he said in the city of Saqaz. The border region with Iraq has often seen deadly clashes between Iran's armed forces and the Kurdish separatists. Iranians have targeted the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), an Iranian Kurdish separatist group which has launched attacks on Iran from rear-supply bases in the Kurdish mountains of northern Iraq. Share This Article With Planet Earth
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