Rumsfeld accuses Iran of allowing weapons to cross into Iraq

US intelligence believes that a cache of newly manufactured Iranian bombs discovered about two weeks ago in northeastern Iraq came from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a US intelligence official told AFP.

"It is true that weapons clearly, unambiguously from Iran have been found in Iraq," Rumsfeld told reporters.

He said he did not know whether there was official Iranian involvement in the weapons smuggling. But he added: "It's a big border and unhelpful for Iranians to be allowing weapons of those types to be crossing the border."

"It's a problem for the Iraqi government. It's a problem for the coalition forces. It's a problem for the international community. And ultimately, it's a problem for Iran," he said.

Pressed on what he meant, Rumsfeld said, "Well, they live in the neighbourhood. The people in that region want this situation stabilised with exception of Iran and Syria," he said.

Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials have often attacked Syria for allowing Iraqi insurgents to move foreign fighters, money and arms across its borders.

But until now they had been more reserved about the role of Iran, whose Shia regime has been viewed as more closely aligned to Iraq's Shia majority than to an insurgency that has been drawn mainly from the country's Sunni minority.

The tougher line against Iran comes amid a spike in US casualties, including 14 marines and an interpreter who were killed last week when a triple decker mine went off under their amphibious assault vehicle.

General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that bomb was "a relatively small device place in the road that overturned the vehicle and when it did so, of course, there was no way out of the vehicle once it overturned."