BERLIN, Nov 8: Iran has decided to withdraw more than 700 military advisers from several countries in a gesture of solidarity with the US-led campaign against Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, a German newspaper said on Thursday.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung quoted Western security sources as saying Iran’s Supreme National Security Council — which is headed by moderate President Mohammad Khatami — decided on the move at a meeting last month.

The decision, supported by moderates and hardliners in Iran, affects Revolutionary Guards and other units currently based in Sudan, Lebanon, Bosnia and other regions, the newspaper said.

A European diplomat responded cautiously to the report. “It is pleasing, but not surprising, if true,” he said.

The Revolutionary Guards, who are separate from Iran’s regular armed forces, started as a revolutionary militia after the 1979 revolution and grew into a ideological military force of more than 120,000 men in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Mustafa Alani, a London-based expert on the Gulf, said the report that Iran was recalling Revolutionary Guards from abroad was credible, but said fewer than 700 were involved.

He said that only about 50 Guards remained in Lebanon as military instructors to Hizbollah, though up 250 other Iranians worked in Hizbollah-run health, education and social agencies.

In Bosnia, the Iranian presence had been reduced to 20 or 30, again involved in humanitarian, and perhaps intelligence, work. Only a handful, possibly inactive, were in Sudan.

Alani told Reuters the decision to recall them was a gesture which Tehran felt was required to gain “immunity” from US attack following the September 11 suicide plane assaults.

“Iran has a genuine intention not to be targeted or accused of being involved in terrorism,” he said. Having Revolutionary Guards abroad served little useful purpose and had become a political embarrassment in a world focused on terrorism.

Alani said Iran also did not want any controversy over the activities of the Guards to undermine its efforts to influence the shape of a post-Taliban government in Afghanistan.

Iran condemned the September 11 attacks, but has opposed, in a relatively muted manner, the US military drive against chief suspect bin Laden and his Taliban protectors in Afghanistan.

Long hostile to the militantly Sunni Muslim Taliban, Iran wants to see a “friendly” government, with minority Shi’ite Muslims adequately represented, take over in Afghanistan.

The German paper also said that Iran had warned the United States one day before former Mujahideen commander Abdul Haq entered Afghanistan in October that he was likely to be assassinated by the Taliban, information taken in Washington as another sign of goodwill.

Haq and his associates were captured and executed on their mission to drum up support for former King Zahir Shah against the Taliban.—Reuters