TEHRAN, April 4 (Reuters) - Iran helped end last week's fighting between Iraqi government troops and a Shi'ite militia in Iraq's oil-rich south, an adviser to a leading Iraqi Shi'ite politician was quoted as saying on Friday. The comments by Mohsen Hakim, whose father Abdul Aziz al-Hakim heads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, underlined Shi'ite Iran's growing influence in Iraq after the U.S.-led overthrow of Sunni Arab strongman Saddam Hussein in 2003. The United States accuses Iran of stoking violence in its neighbour by funding, training and equipping Iraqi militants. Iran denies this and blames the presence of U.S. troops for the bloodshed. Mohsen Hakim told Iran's Mehr News Agency an Iraqi delegation led by a prominent Shi'ite lawmaker held talks with Iranian officials during a visit to Iran last Friday. Two days later, fiery anti-U.S. Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr announced a truce to end six days of clashes with Iraqi and U.S. troops in the southern city of Basra that spread through southern Iraq and Baghdad. U.S. officials say Sadr is currently in Iran. "Tehran, by using its positive influence on the Iraqi nation, paved the way for the return of peace to Iraq and the new situation is the result of Iran's efforts," Hakim was quoted as saying, without giving further details. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's crackdown on militias in Basra exposed a deep rift among Iraq's majority Shi'ites. The Supreme Council is a key backer of Maliki but a bitter rival of Sadr's movement. The two groups are competing for power in Shi'ite southern Iraq, home to most of Iraq's oil reserves. Last week's violence in which several hundred people were killed served as a reminder of the instability in Iraq after months of security improvements. Sadr has called for 1 million Iraqis to march next week against what he calls the U.S. occupation of Iraq. The Sadrists, who helped install Maliki in power in 2006 but broke with the government last year, have accused Supreme Council followers of infiltrating the security forces and attacking them. In his interview with Mehr, Hakim also said the United States had requested a fourth round of talks with Iranian and Iraqi officials on ways to improve security in Iraq. Easing a diplomatic freeze lasting almost three decades, Iran and the United States met three times in Baghdad last year, but a planned fourth meeting has been repeatedly postponed. "In the last week, America has requested a new round of trilateral talks with Iran and Iraq and announced that the reason for the delay of the fourth round of talks had been technical issues," Hakim said. U.S. President George W. Bush, seeking to bolster Maliki, last week said he wanted to send a "clear message" to Iran that it could not have its way in the Middle East. (Reporting by Zahra Hosseinian; Writing by Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Dean Yates and Giles Elgood)
A U.S. soldier guards a helicopter in Mussayab, a predominately Shi'ite neighbourhood 60 km (40 miles) south of Baghdad April 2, 2008. The United States could quickly lose its security gains ...
