WASHINGTON, April 30: Efforts by some key US allies to engage Iran have failed to win an end to its “support for terrorism” in the Middle East and elsewhere and other destructive policies, the White House said on Monday.

“The problem with Iran is that its policies unfortunately belie the notion that engagement with it has helped,” US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said in remarks here to students of foreign policy.

“Our problem with Iran is in policies that are so destructive to international politics, from the support of terrorism around the world to the support of terrorism in the Middle East,” as well as the hold on power of an “unelected few” who resist reforms, she said.

Iran termed the remarks immature and said it amounted to “interference in internal affairs.

A spokesman for the foreign ministry described the present United States stance towards Iran as an “old-fashioned and defeated policy of creating discord”.

The national security adviser acknowledged some useful interaction between Washington and Tehran on the issue of Afghanistan.

And the US official said there were positive forces in Iran, but added: “Those positive forces are not quite yet capable of changing the nature of Iran’s behaviour.”

US President George W. Bush has lumped Iran with Iraq and North Korea in an “axis of evil” that he says threatens to team terrorist groups with dangerous regimes.

“We watch the developments with great interest, but Iranian behavior puts it squarely in the ‘axis of evil’, whether it is weapons of mass destruction, or terrorism,” Rice said at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.—AFP