Maliki flew to Tehran from Amman and went straight into a series of meetings, including with Iran's first vice president Mohammad Reza Rahimi and with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to local media.

State news agency IRNA also reported that the Iraqi leader was later Monday headed to the holy city of Qom.

Maliki had been in Jordan on Sunday as part of his tour of Middle East capitals aimed at drumming up support as he fights to keep his job after an inconclusive March 7 general election.

His Shiite-led State of Law bloc finished a narrow second behind Allawi's mainly Sunni-backed Iraqiya alliance but neither came close to securing a parliamentary majority in the vote.

Allawi, who has looked to support from Gulf Arab states led by Saudi Arabia which he visited earlier this month, at the weekend renewed accusations that Iran is meddling in the drawn-out coalition talks in Baghdad.

"We know that unfortunately Iran is trying to wreak havoc on the region, and trying to destabilise the region by destabilising Iraq, and destabilising Lebanon and destabilising the Palestinian issue," Allawi told CNN on Sunday.

"And this is where unfortunately Iraq and the rest of the greater Mideast is falling victim to these terrorists who are definitely Iran-financed and supported by various governments in the region."

Allawi's Iraqiya bloc controls 91 of the 325 seats in the Iraqi parliament, two more than Maliki's State of Law alliance.

Tehran's envoy to Baghdad, Hassan Danaeifar, dismissed Allawi's accusations.

"These comments are not true. He makes such remarks on the threshold of trips (of Maliki) to other nations, and they are baseless," he was quoted as saying by Iran's Fars news agency.

"These comments are old and these friends have made them so many times that nobody listens."

He backed Maliki's visit to Tehran, saying it was aimed at "consulting and exchanging views with influential regional and neighbouring nations."

Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Rauf Sheybani said Maliki was an "appropriate" choice.

"Choosing Mr. Maliki as the candidate... is respected by the Islamic Republic of Iran," Sheybani told IRNA.

"With the occupying forces exiting Iraq and given the current sensitive circumstances, he seems to be one of the appropriate choices for Iraq."

Maliki visited Iran ally Syria last Wednesday and plans to tour several Gulf Arab states, where support for his rival has been strong, a close aide told AFP on Saturday.

Iranian state television's Arabic-language Al-Alam channel said the premier also intends to visit regional heavyweights Egypt and Turkey after his Tehran visit.

Allawi has himself been trying to secure regional support with visits not only to Saudi Arabia but also to Damascus and Beirut in the past few months.

London's Guardian newspaper meanwhile reported that Iran has brokered a critical deal with regional neighbours to install a pro-Tehran government in Iraq.

It said Iran was instrumental in forming the alliance between Maliki and Iraq's powerful radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who reportedly is studying in Iran, a move seen boosting Maliki's bid for premiership.

"The deal which involved Syria, Lebanon's Hezbollah and the highest authorities in Shiite Islam positions Maliki as a frontrunner to return as leader despite a seven-month stalemate between Iraq's feuding political blocs," the newspaper said, quoting senior Iraqi officials which it did not name.

The Guardian said the Iranians saw their opportunity after the US military withdrew its combat troops from Iraq in end August.

"The Iranians were holding out until then," said a source about the timing of the Iranian move, the newspaper reported. "They were not going to give the Americans the satisfaction of leaving on a good note."

earlier related report
Pentagon bracing for release of 400,000 secret Iraq reports
Washington (AFP) Oct 18, 2010 - The Pentagon scoured through an Iraq war database Monday to prepare for potential fallout from an expected release by WikiLeaks of some 400,000 secret military reports.

The massive release, possibly early this week, is set to dwarf the whistleblower website's publication of 77,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan in July, including the names of Afghan informants and other details from raw intelligence reports. Another 15,000 are due out soon.

In order to prepare for the anticipated release of sensitive intelligence on the US-led Iraq war, officials set up a 120-person taskforce several weeks ago to comb through the database and "determine what the possible impacts might be," said Colonel David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman.

The Department of Defense is concerned the leak compiles "significant activities" from the war, which include incidents such as known attacks against coalition troops, Iraqi security forces, civilians or infrastructure in the country.

The data was culled from an Iraq-based database that contained "significant acts, unit-level reporting, tactical reports, things of that nature," said Lapan, noting that Pentagon officials still do not know how many and which documents would be released.

He urged WikiLeaks to return the documents to the US military, which he said found no need to redact them in the interim.

"Our position is redactions don't help, it's returning the documents to their rightful owner," Lapan said.

"We don't believe WikiLeaks or others have the expertise needed. It's not as simple as just taking out names. There are other things and documents that aren't names that are also potentially damaging."

For the Iraq leak, Wikileaks is believed to be teaming up with the same news outlets as it did for the Afghanistan document dump -- The New York Times, Britain's Guardian and Der Spiegel of Germany -- and Newsweek magazine has reported that all partners would release the material simultaneously.

The July release caused uproar in the US government, with director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA director Michael Hayden warning it could undermine the post-9/11 effort to break down walls between rival intelligence agencies.

Difficulties in sharing intelligence information have been repeatedly identified as a problem plaguing spy and law enforcement services since the attacks of September 11, 2001.

In a speech this month, Clapper said President Barack Obama was full of "angst" over a "hemorrhage" of leaks of sensitive intelligence from government officials.

"I think it's going to have a very chilling effect on the need to share," he said.

WikiLeaks has not identified the source of the documents it has released so far but suspicion has fallen on Bradley Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst who is in military custody.

Manning was arrested in May following the release by WikiLeaks of video footage of a US Apache helicopter strike in Iraq in which civilians died, and he has been charged with delivering defense information to an unauthorized source.

Launched in 2006, WikiLeaks is facing internal troubles amid criticism its releases harm US national security and an ongoing investigation into its founder, Julian Assange, over an alleged sex crime in Sweden.

It also has some money problems.

Assange told The Guardian that British firm Moneybookers, an online payment company it uses to collect donations, closed his website's account in August after the US and Australian governments blacklisted WikiLeaks in the days following the initial release of Afghan documents.

The website has been undergoing "scheduled maintenance" since September 29, but promises to "be back online as soon as possible."

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