By IRNA
London : A leading British daily Thursday questioned US policy of making unsubstantiated claims against Iran at a time when Washington needs Tehran's help to stabilize Iraq.
"The inflammatory charges the Bush administration is levelling at Iran add to a long litany of unsubstantiated claims about an insurgency (in Iraq) it has only recently been able partially to identify," the Financial Times said.
It said that the "uncomfortable facts" for Washington were that its occupation forces are confronting "an overwhelmingly Iraqi insurgency, including a new generation of indigenous jihadis created by the US-led invasion."
"To the limited extent that foreign fighters are involved, these have mostly come from US ally Saudi Arabia, not Iran," the daily said.
Its editorial on this week's second round of talks in Baghdad between Iranian and American diplomats also described Washington's charges against Tehran of supplying roadside bombs as "much-hyped." The bombs are "made by easily learned techniques, pioneered by Hizbollah, but copied locally by insurgents supplied with vast quantities of Iraqi ordinance from arms dumps US forces never bothered to secure," it said.
The paper also said that US claims about Iran's alliances in Iraq "do not stand scrutiny." The insurgency is not Shia but "mainly Sunni," it said.
The editorial described the rhetoric as reaching "visceral level" and said that the US was floundering in "frustration in Iraq" and warned that the challenge was to ensure that Iraq does "not become an arena for a proxy war between the US and Iran."
But it believed that this was why continuing the talks between the two countries was "so important."
"As the US comes to recognise it needs Iran to stabilise Iraq, moreover, it may conclude that the Middle East as a whole would be a lot safer if it could get Tehran invested in its stability," the Financial Times suggested.