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WASHINGTON, Thursday (AFP) The United States said it has warned Iran against "any outside interference" in Iraq amid concerns that Tehran has sent agents there, perhaps to push its brand of Islamic government.

"We have well-known channels of communication with Iran and we have made clear to Iran that we would oppose any outside interference in Iraq's road to democracy," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

"Infiltration of agents to destabilize the Shi'a population would clearly fall into that category," the spokesman told reporters.

Earlier, The New York Times, citing US officials, reported that Iran-trained agents were crossing into southern Iraq to promote friendly Shiite clerics and possibly an Iranian model of Islamic government.

The unnamed officials told the daily that, based on intelligence reports, some agents were members of the Badr Brigade, the military wing of an Iraqi exile group operating from Iran, and irregular members of a special unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. "They are not looking to promote a democratic agenda," one military official told the Times.

Fleischer would not explicitly confirm the report, and dodged repeated questions on how Washington would respond.

"We have concerns about this matter, about Iranian agents in Iraq," he said, adding:

"We've made our thoughts clear to the Iranians." Officials told the Times that the Shiite Muslim pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala, 80 kilometers (50 miles) to the south of Baghdad, provided cover for the Iranian agents, and that members of the Badr Brigade have been seen to "shed their uniforms, put on civilian clothes, and disappear."

They said the US government was concerned that Iran may be trying to take a more assertive role in shaping developments in southern Iraq, where the population is predominantly Shiite Muslim like that of Iran.

In main concern, the US officials added, is that Tehran may be seeking to promote an Iranian model of government. The majority Shiite population in Iraq was oppressed for years under Saddam's dictatorship. After the 1991 Gulf War, the US-led coalition, it is believed, did not try to overthrow Saddam for fear that a Shiite-led Islamic goverment would take his place.

Fleischer strove to differentiate between US opposition to "an Islamic dictatorship" and a new Iraqi government run by Muslims.

"The president continues to believe that Islam is a peaceful religion; nothing has changed," he said. "I think it's a given that it will be an Islamic leader, it's an Islamic country."

"That's different from an Islamic dictatorship that doesn't respect the religious disagreements among the people, that is not tolerant, that is dictatorial, that is closed, that doesn't govern by a rule of law or transparency."

Meanwhile faced with resurgent Shiite political activism, US marines have begun patrolling stretches of the Iraqi border with Iran in order to screen border traffic for hostile infiltrators, the US military announced Wednesday.

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Iran warns US

Tehran, Thursday (AFP) Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi on Thursday warned US troops not to violate the "red line" of its border with Iraq, and voiced alarm over a reported ceasefire deal between the US and the Iraq-based People's Mujahedeen armed opposition group.

Saying US forces on the border were "not a new phenomenon" since the beginning of the war on Iraq, Kharazi added, "it is clear that we are going to defend our frontiers; the red line passes along the line of our borders." Kharazi also classed as "baseless" allegations from Washington that Iranian agents were seeking to infiltrate Iraq to push Shiite Muslim Iran's brand of Islamic government.

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