BAGHDAD - A top Iranian diplomat seized at gunpoint in Baghdad two months ago has been released, as Iraq confirmed on Tuesday it was still working to secure the release of five other Iranians held by US troops.
Jalal Sharafi, second secretary at Tehran`s mission in Baghdad, was abducted by gunmen dressed in Iraqi army uniforms in the largely Shiite district of Karrada, outside a branch of Iranian state-owned Bank Melli, on February 4.
An Iranian embassy official confirmed that Sharafi had been released following his ordeal and would be soon leaving for home.
Tehran`s foreign ministry blamed a group linked to Iraq`s defence ministry, and indirectly US forces, for their man`s shock abduction just weeks after US forces arrested five Iranians in the northern city of Arbil.
Iran and the United States, which both back the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, have been increasingly at loggerheads since US forces arrested the five Iranians on January 11 from an Iranian liaison office.
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told AFP that the Iraqi authorities were still petitioning US diplomatic and military officials to release the five, who are being held on suspicion of helping anti-US insurgents.
"We have been asking actually the Americans formally to release them for quite some time but still they have not been released," he said.
British newspaper The Independent reported that US forces been hoping to capture top security officials, Mohammed Jafari, the deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the Revolutionary Guard`s chief of intelligence, in the raid.
But Zebari flatly denied any connection between the five Iranians held by the Americans and Iran`s detention of 15 British navy personnel in the northern Gulf on March 23 and accused of trespassing in Iranian waters.
"This has nothing to do with that. I want to make that absolutely clear. This has no linkage with the British sailors," he said.
"Our efforts here to ensure the release of the Iranians in Arbil has nothing to do with the detention by the Iranians of the British sailors. This has been an ongoing attempt by us to secure their release."
Zebari last month telephoned his Iranian counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki to ask Tehran to free the British sailors and marines, saying they had been operating in Iraqi waters.
The United States has also rejected any suggestion that the 15 Britons could be swapped for the five Iranians.
Zebari said the foreign ministry had been working to secure Sharafi`s release for some time and were pleased he had been freed safe and sound.
He described the capture of the Baghdad-based Iranian diplomat as "very mysterious" saying the ministry did not know who was behind his capture but had pursued the matter with "all the relevant authorities".
"We approached, contacted, followed that case with both Iraqi entities and American entities with the same vigor to ensure the release," the minister said.
Four Iraqi military officers detained over the kidnapping are still in Iraqi detention, he said.
The US military also expressed ignorance about Sharafi`s release.
"We were not holding him, so we do not know about his release," spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver told AFP.
Meanwhile, the military earlier announced that four more troops had been killed in Iraq, where American officials charge Iranian elements are supporting Shiite militias and sending weapons that kill its forces.
One of the soldiers died from a suicide truck bombing in the contested northern oil capital of Kirkuk that targeted a police station where American forces were visiting at the time, and damaged a girls` primary school.
The bomb was hidden under packs of flour in a new tactic designed to lull victims into a false sense of security. It killed 13 Iraqis, including eight schoolgirls and a toddler. Another two American soldiers were wounded.
Three others died in separate insurgent attacks on Monday.
04/03/2007 15:54 GMT