TEHRAN - Radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr said on a visit to Iran Sunday that his Mehdi Army militia would "support" any neighbouring country if they were attacked, the ISNA news agency reported.
"If neighbouring Muslim countries are attacked, the Mehdi Army will support them," he was quoted as saying after meeting with Iran's top national security official Ali Larijani.
"The Mehdi Army was created to defend Islam and will support the interests of the Iraqi people and the Islamic countries," said the firebrand cleric, a key opponent of the presence of US troops in Iraq.
Sadr did not mention any specific neighbour of Iraq, although Shiite Iran is under intense international pressure over its disputed nuclear programme and facing referral to the UN Security Council -- with Israel also vowing not to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear arsenal.
Another one of Iraq's neighbours, Syria, has also been implicated by a UN into the murder of Lebanon's ex-premier Rafiq Hariri.
Iran has been accused by both Britain and the United States of supporting Iraqi insurgents, including Sadr. Iran denies the charges.
Sadr's men clashed with US forces in 2004 and scorned elections in Iraq last January for a transitional government. But they took part in the most recent poll for a permanent parliament -- the first since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The cleric has rarely travelled abroad, and was last known to have visited neighbouring Iran in June 2003 to take part in a commemoration marking the anniversary of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death.
Tehran also used the visit to repeat its call for foreign troops to quit Iraq.
"The American forces are there to dominate Iraqi interests," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who met the firebrand cleric, was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA.
"The crisis existing in Iraq can be resolved with the departure of the occupying forces," the minister said.
IRNA quoted Sadr as saying: "We are happy that ties between the Iranian and the Iraqi nations are developing every day and we always support the strengthening of Iraq's relations with all neighbours, especially the Islamic republic of Iran."
Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters that Sadr was visiting Iran for talks while on the way back from the Hajj, or pilgrimage, to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
"We have relations with all Iraqi groups -- Shites, Sunnis and Kurds -- and the situation in Iraq requires continued talks between Iran and all groups," Asefi said.
Asefi did not say how long Sadr would be in Iran.
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