TEHRAN, 11 August 2004 — Iran said yesterday it had invited Iraq’s interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi for an official visit as it sought to defuse a row sparked by charges it is involved in an upsurge in violence in Iraq.

Tehran has been incensed by accusations leveled by Iraqi Defense Minister Hazim Al-Shalaan who said Iraq’s powerful Shiite neighbor was Baghdad’s prime enemy and said its fingerprints could be seen in the recent fighting in Najaf.

Tensions between the countries, who fought a 1980-1988 war in which hundreds of thousands were killed, were exacerbated by the kidnapping last week of an Iranian diplomat by a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq. Shalaan told Al Arabiya television on Monday that Shiite rebels were using arms manufactured in Iran to wage a bloody uprising in Najaf, where fighting has raged for days.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said Tehran had sent a written invitation to Allawi, who chose not to visit Iran during a tour of regional countries earlier this month. He gave no date for the proposed visit. Iran has cautiously welcomed Iraq’s new interim government as a step toward full Iraqi sovereignty and routinely denies US and Iraqi charges of meddling in its western neighbor.

Kharrazi said he discussed Shalaan’s accusations with Iraqi counterpart Hoshiyar Zebari by telephone yesterday. “The Iraqi foreign minister expressed regret and said (Shalaan’s comments) were not the official stance of the Iraqi government,” Kharrazi told the official IRNA news agency.

Meanwhile, Iran’s conservative-controlled Parliament yesterday put the heat on Kharrazi for his alleged mishandling of Iran’s nuclear dossier.

“Why did we surrender to the demands of the Europeans and the West?” asked Akbar Alami, a member of the Majlis foreign policy and national security commission, in a debate carried live on state radio.

“I have even heard that one member of our delegation to the Paris negotiations told the Europeans that Iran would guarantee that it would not leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty if the Westerners did not take our case to the United Nations Security Council,” he added.

Iran, however, has stood by its right to enrich uranium, insisting that is legal under the NPT if for peaceful purposes. But another conservative deputy, Ali Ahmadi, asked Kharrazi why Iran had agreed to allow tougher inspections under the additional protocol while the text has not yet been ratified by Parliament.

Kharrazi defended his handling of the dossier, and said overall responsibility in the negotiations was with Hassan Rowhani, a powerful conservative cleric who heads Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. “The nuclear issue in Iran gets special treatment. Dr. Hassan Rowhani, a well-known politician, is heading the case, while the Foreign Ministry and the atomic organization are helping him out,” Kharrazi asserted.