(AP)
Updated: 2007-09-24 21:21

Al-Maliki also condemned the Iranian's arrest, saying he understood the man, who has been identified as Mahmudi Farhadi, had been invited to Iraq. US officials said he was a member of the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards accused of smuggling weapons into Iraq.

"The government of Iraq is an elected one and sovereign. When it gives a visa, it is responsible for the visa," al-Maliki told The Associated Press in an interview Sunday in New York. "We consider the arrest ... of this individual who holds an Iraqi visa and a (valid) passport to be unacceptable."

Last week, President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, demanded the Iranian's release and warned in a letter to America's top commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and the US Ambassador Ryan Crocker, that Iran had threatened to close its border with Iraq's Kurdish region over the case.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Sunday that Farhadi was in charge of border transactions in western Iran and went to Iraq on an official invitation.

The US military said the suspect was being questioned about "his knowledge of, and involvement in," the transportation of EFPs and other roadside bombs from Iran into Iraq and his possible role in the training of Iraqi insurgents in Iran. No charges against the Iranian have been filed yet.

In more violence Monday, an Iraqi security guard was killed and three others were wounded when a car bomb exploded near the convoy of a local security official near the northern city of Kirkuk, police Brig. Gen. Sarhat Qadir said.

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