WASHINGTON, March 9: Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Thursday the United States had no plans to attack Iran, but warned that US forces would take ‘appropriate’ action to stop Iranian forces infiltrating Iraq.

Gen Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was more explicit in warning before a Senate committee that any Iranian forces that engage US troops in Iraq would be treated as enemy forces.

Mr Rumsfeld charged that Iran is inserting people into Iraq to do ‘damaging and dangerous’ things to US forces and warned that ‘our forces will certainly take the appropriate steps to stop them’.

Addressing the same body, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Washington faces no greater challenge than Tehran, urging Congress to adopt a package aimed at promoting democracy in Iran.

“We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran, whose policies are directed at developing a Middle East that would be 180? degrees different than the Middle East we would like to see develop,” Ms Rice told the Senate Appropriations Committee.

“This is a country that is determined; it seems, to develop a nuclear weapon in defiance of the international community that is determined that they should not get one.”

Ms Rice, who appeared before the committee along with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, accused Tehran of being ‘the central banker for terrorism’ and of backing terrorist activities in southern Iraq, the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon.

Her comments came as Iran’s government vowed not to abandon the country’s nuclear program despite the possibility of sanctions by the UN Security Council.

Ms Rice told the Senate committee that the 75 million dollars being sought by the administration for Iran would be used to help non-governmental organisations and to reach out to the Iranian people through broadcasts, the Internet and cultural outreach programmes.

“There is nothing more important, as we try and make certain that the Iranian government recognises that it would be isolated if it continues down this path, that we not isolate the Iranian people,” Ms Rice said. “And these programmes are in many ways critical to not isolating the Iranian people.”

She also denounced Iran for its poor human rights record, which was heavily criticised in an annual rights report issued by the State Department on Wednesday.

“Iran, of course, has a terrible human rights record and (is) a country in which an unelected few are frustrating the desires and wishes of the Iranian people for democracy,” she said.—AFP