The US announced the capture of four more key members of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's inner circle, while Iran yesterday warned patrolling US troops not to violate its border with Iraq.
Washington's civil administrator for Iraq, retired US general Jay Garner, returned to Baghdad to recruit locals to work with US forces in rebuilding the war-ravaged country, following talks with Kurdish leaders in the north.
The US military notched four more successes in its bid to apprehend the top members of Saddam's ousted regime, taking into custody three officials on its list of 55 "most wanted" suspects, as well as a key Iraqi intelligence agent.
Iraq's director of military intelligence Zuhayr Talib Abd al Sattar al Naqib, air defense force commander Muzahim Sab Hassan al-Tikriti and Trade Minister Muhammad Mahdi al-Salih were in US hands, US Central Command said.
Naqib was holding red beads in one hand and an attache case with his personal belongings in the other when he surrendered to US troops, according to the Los Angeles Times, which had interviewed him shortly beforehand.
"This was the military, you move up from position to position. I was just following orders," he was quoted as saying. "But I will not answer whether I believed in the regime."
The arrests brought to 11 the number of key fugitives on the most wanted list captured since the fall of Saddam's regime, marked when US forces swept into Baghdad on April 9.
In a separate statement, the US military said coalition special forces had also captured Salim Said Khalaf al-Jumayli, former chief of the Iraqi intelligence service's US desk. He was not on the "most wanted" list.
"He is suspected of having knowledge of Iraqi intelligence service activities in the United States, including names of persons spying for Iraq," said spokesman Jim Wilkinson.
As the US continued its hunt for Saddam's aides -- and the deposed leader himself -- its patrols along Iraq's border with Iran sparked ire in Tehran, where officials warned US troops not to cross the "red line."
While admitting that seeing US Marines along the Iraq-Iran border was "not a new phenomenon" since the start of the US-led war in Iraq on March 20, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi warned US soldiers not to go further.
"It is clear that we are going to defend our frontiers; the red line passes along the line of our borders," Kharazi said at a joint press conference with French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin.
Kharazi also rejected US claims that Iran-trained agents were trying to infiltrate Iraq to push Tehran's brand of Islamic government.
US Marines have been deployed along parts of Iraq's border with Iran to screen traffic for hostile infiltrators, the US military announced Wednesday.
US Central Command in Qatar said the patrols have been under way in northeastern Iraq since Monday, amid new concern that Iranian agents bent on stirring up anti-US unrest among fellow Iraqi Shiite Muslims might be slipping across the frontier.
"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 Shia population would clearly fall into that category," he added.
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