RIYADH/TEHRAN, March 4: The leaders of regional heavyweights Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed at talks in Riyadh to fight growing Sunni-Shia strife, warning that it was the greatest danger facing the region and the Muslim world.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he and Saudi King Abdullah agreed at their meeting on Saturday that their two countries would work together to thwart enemy plots seeking to divide the Islamic world.

“The two leaders affirmed that the greatest danger presently threatening the Islamic nation is the attempt to fuel the fire of strife between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and that efforts must concentrate on countering these attempts and closing ranks,” Saudi Arabia's official SPA news agency added.

The meeting between the two most influential Muslim powers was held against a backdrop of mounting fears that the sectarian bloodshed engulfing Iraq could spill over into the region and other parts of the world.

Saudi commentators say that Mr Ahmadinejad's visit is a sign that the two countries are pooling efforts to ease explosive regional crises.

The SPA said the two leaders stressed the need for preserving Iraq's independence, national unity and equality between its citizens. It said Mr Ahmadinejad also endorsed Riyadh's efforts to resolve the political crisis in Lebanon, which has raised fears of a return to the communal bloodletting that tore the country apart in the 1975-1990 civil war.Mr Ahmadinejad's visit came at a time when his country is under intense Western pressure over its nuclear programme. Saudi Arabia champions a nuclear-free Middle East, but is also keen to avert a US-Iran military showdown which could destabilise the entire Gulf region.

The Iranian leader previously met King Abdullah at an Islamic summit in Makkah in December 2005, making this his first visit to the kingdom specifically for bilateral talks.Mr Ahmadinejad told reporters on his return to Tehran that he and King Abdullah discussed plots carried out by the enemies in order to divide the world of Islam.

“Fortunately we and the Saudis were fully aware of the threats of our enemies and we condemned them,” he said.

He did not specify who the enemies were. Iran's chief western foe, the United States, is one of Riyadh's closest allies.

Lebanon has also severely tested ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which provides substantial financial aid to Beirut and has close links with the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora. The anti-Syrian government has been crippled by an opposition ministerial walkout and an open-ended protest spearheaded by the Syrian and Iranian-backed Hezbollah and other allied parties.

But Riyadh and Tehran recently began working together to reduce tensions in Lebanon, and according to the Saudi account of the talks, Mr Ahmadinejad said Iran was assisting the kingdom's efforts to calm the situation and end the crisis.

The two leaders expressed the hope that “all Lebanese sides will respond to these efforts,” the SPA said. It said Mr Ahmadinejad also “voiced support for the Arab peace initiative” endorsed at an Arab summit in 2002, although Mr Ahmadinejad's office on Sunday vehemently denied any such discussion had taken place.

“In the meeting of President Ahmadinejad with King Abdullah there was absolutely no talk about the 2002 initiative,” Ehsan Jahandidieh of the presidential press office told journalists in Tehran.

Under the Saudi-authored plan, the Arab world would normalise ties with Israel in exchange for a full withdrawal from Arab land occupied since 1967 and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

However, Mr Ahmadinejad has said repeatedly that Israel should be “wiped from the map” and predicted that the Jewish state was doomed to disappear.

Iranian officials, including Iran's top authority Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have been warning Muslims about efforts by the United States and its allies to drive a wedge between Sunnis and Shias.—Agencies