JAKARTA - Top US General Peter Pace said on Tuesday the discovery of Iranian-made bombs and arrest of Iranians in Iraq did not indicate Tehran had been arming insurgents fighting coalition forces, contradicting claims by the US government.
"That does not translate to that the Iranian government per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this," Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in the Indonesian capital Jakarta.
“What it does say is that things that are made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers”, he said.
US defence officials in Baghdad on Sunday said that sophisticated Iranian-built bombs smuggled into Iraq have killed at least 170 US and allied soldiers since June 2004 and wounded 620 more.
Three officials with the US-led coalition met foreign and Iraqi journalists to point the finger at the Al-Qods brigade of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Tehran's elite forces.
They spoke on condition of anonymity and cameras and recording devices were barred from the briefing, at which an array of mortar shells and booby traps were laid out for inspection.
The White House, its credibility tarnished by the flawed case for invading Iraq, has vouched for the charges.
Tehran has rejected the allegations as "without foundation" and US opposition Democrats have expressed scepticism.
Pace said security, good governance and an economic environment that provides jobs were "very important parts of making progress towards a stable, free Iraq."
"You cannot have one of those without all three, so it is important to have enough security to be able to give the government the opportunity to provide balanced leadership to the country and to provide jobs."
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