Iran: U.S. allegations are 'outdated and inaccurate'

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- An Iranian official has said that U.S. allegations about interference by Iranians in Afghanistan, including possible help given to al Qaeda fugitives, was outdated, inaccurate and of little use.

Responding to a British Broadcasting Corp. report, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told CNN that the United States had given Iran a dossier alleging his country interfered in Afghanistan.

But Asefi said his government could act only on "timely and accurate" information.

Sources said Iran received the documents in late 2001 during U.N.-sponsored multilateral talks in Germany about Afghanistan.

President Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the BBC that the United States gave Iran information about alleged activities of a unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards in Afghanistan. The guards are under control of Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini.

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Khalilzad said the United States accused the guard units of helping to arm and finance dissident Afghans in western Afghanistan and helping al Qaeda terrorists, and possibly Taliban leaders, flee Afghanistan through Iran.

Khalilzad said the United States merely wanted to bring the information to Tehran's attention in the hope it would confront any wrongdoers.

But Asefi said, "Any information given to us has to be accurate, timely and precise. Outdated and inaccurate information is of no use."

Sources in Tehran said the U.S. dossier also included information about the activities of exiled Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who fled to Iran after his forces were defeated by the Taliban nearly five years ago.

Iran may be acting on that information: In the past few days, the government closed Hekmatyar's offices and cut off telephone service to his home.

Officials also are considering expelling him from the country.

Axis of evil

Hekmatyar told journalists in Tehran recently that he was forming a coalition of Afghan militias to fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan and the interim government in Kabul, which he described as a "U.S. puppet."

Last month in his State of the Union address, Bush named Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil" that support terrorism.

Speaking before a congressional panel Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Iran "in some ways" has been "very helpful to our efforts" in Afghanistan. But he also said there have been troubling indications that Iran may be exporting weapons into western Afghanistan to destabilize the region.

Powell also said Iran continues to seek weapons of mass destruction and to support terrorists.

"We have to be troubled by a regime that's pursuing weapons of mass destruction and nuclear capability and that is supporting terrorism," Powell said.

He added that when President Bush referred to Iran in his State of the Union as an "axis of evil," Bush "called it like it is."