WASHINGTON, March 7: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused Iran on Tuesday of sending Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces into Iraq, and warned Tehran it was ‘an error in judgement’.

“They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq, and we know it, and it is something that they will look back on as having been an error in judgement,” he told reporters here.

Pressed to elaborate, Rumsfeld said the Iranians were putting ‘Quds force-type people’, or Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces, into Iraq.

“I don’t think we could consider them religious pilgrims,” Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld charges come amid heightened sectarian tension inside Iraq that have raised fears of civil war. At the same time, Washington is engaged in a sharpening diplomatic confrontation with Iran over suspicions it is developing nuclear weapons.

Many Iraqi Shia leaders, who are now locked in struggle with Sunnis and Kurds over the formation of a new government, have ties with Iran’s ruling Shia clergy that were forged in exile.

But Rumsfeld said he believed the Shia see themselves as Iraqis first.

“I think they are not going to be enamoured of having help from across their border,” he said.—AFP