BAGHDAD - Baghdad and Tehran pledged Tuesday to turn the page on nearly a quarter of a century of war and bitter rivalry during a visit here by Iran's foreign minister, who expressed support for Iraq's new Shiite-led government.
Meanwhile, Britain's defence secretary also visited Baghdad to reaffirm London's commitment to maintaining its troops in Iraq for as long as the government here deemed necessary.
And the Danish parliament debated whether to extend the mandate of its own troops in the country after a Danish intelligence report warned that a retreat of coalition forces could result in full-blown civil war.
"I have no doubt this visit will open up significant new horizons for cooperation between the two countries," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told a joint news conference after his talks with Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharazi.
"Post-Saddam Iraq is a new Iraq, at peace with its neighbours, far removed from its bellicose predecessor," he added.
Kharazi, the highest-ranking Iranian official to visit Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein two years ago, assured his counterpart that Iran would not interfere in its neighbour's affairs.
"Iraqis are in charge of their own affairs... Any interference would be an insult to the Iraqi people," Kharazi said.
"It is in Iran's interest to support by all possible means the Iraqi government. It is not in the interest of any of Iraq's neighbours to see the current situation continue because it would have negative consequences on the entire region," he added.
Kharazi's visit, just two days after that of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, highlights the warming of ties between the two neighbours and their attempt to normalise relations.
Baghdad and Tehran re-established diplomatic ties in September, although many issues, including a peace treaty, remain unresolved following the devastating 1980-1988 war that left around one million dead.
Relations between Shiite majority Iran and the interim government set up by the United States in June 2004 were awkward.
But the formation early this month of a Shiite-dominated government has helped ease relations. Many of the new Iraqi ministers spent years in exile in Iran, an arch-foe of Washington, and Zebari made a point of repeatedly speaking in Farsi during the news conference.
Kharazi's visit comes against a backdrop of increasing tension between majority Shiites and previously dominant Sunni Arabs in Iraq, where a recent series of tit-for-tat killings have raised the spectre of a sectarian war.
Three of the country's top Shiite figures -- Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, radical cleric Moqtada Sadr and Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari -- Monday warned against rising violence after the gruesome discovery of 46 mutilated bodies and the killing of both Shiite and Sunni clerics.
The warning was echoed in Denmark where an intelligence report sent to the government last week said "there is huge hostility between a number of groups in Iraq. That's why civil war is probable if the coalition forces retreat now."
The report was leaked as the Danish parliament began debating whether to extend the country's troop mandate in Iraq after its 530 soldiers complete their current tour of duty on June 2.
Britain's new defence secretary, John Reid, meanwhile met in Baghdad with Iraqi counterpart Saadun al-Dulaimi just as the Foreign Office pledged that London "will continue to provide troops for as long as the Iraqi government wants us to remain".
Britain, Washington's closest ally in the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, has some 8,000 troops in the country, mainly based around the southern port city of Basra which Reid was also visiting.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb killed one US soldier and wounded another north of Baghdad, bringing the American death toll to 25 over the past 11 days.
Other violence against Iraqi security forces and civil servants continued Tuesday, when an employee of Iraq's anti-corruption body was assassinated in Baghdad.
Alaaeddin Wazir al-Obeidi, the second member of the Commission on Public Integrity (CPI) to be killed in a month, was gunned down in one of the capital's most dangerous neighbourhoods.
A man and his three sons were also killed by unknown attackers in a village near Mahawil, 70 kilometres (45 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.
North of the capital, four Iraqis were killed, including a soldier, and two were wounded in three separate bomb attacks. The Iraqi Army also found the bodies of two Iraqi contractors near Sharkat, 300 kilometres (188 miles) north of the capital.
In the United States, a military policewoman who set up the picture of a hooded prisoner on a box with wires attached to his hands, was found guilty on a number of charges, the latest judicial development in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal which has cast a long shadow over the US venture in Iraq.
Specialist Sabrina Harman, 27, faces five and half years in jail.
05/17/2005 16:21 GMT