IRAN told Washington yesterday that it would never accept an American attempt to impose military rule on Iraq if Saddam Hussein were toppled from power.

In stark, unambiguous language, Kamal Kharrazi, the Iranian Foreign Minister, condemned leaked proposals to install a US general at the head of an interim post-Saddam administration as unwarranted neocolonialism. Citing Iraq’s bloody experience of British-backed regimes, he issued a warning that such an administration could lead to future bloodshed and instability.

But Mr Kharrazi, a key member of President Khatami’s Government, gave the strongest indication yet that, while Tehran remains implacably opposed to any military action, it would reluctantly acquiesce if it were backed by the United Nations.

“If it happens that the Iraqi people choose a new government that is up to them, but a military ruler from outside will certainly not be welcomed by the Iraqi people and none of the governments in this region,” he said in Tehran yesterday.

Asked if Iran and neighbouring states would refuse to work with such a regime, he said: “Yes, I believe that is a failure. They cannot buy that proposal. You should remember the time that the British rulers were in Iraq, the time that those who were supported by the British Government were ruling Iraq — and what was the result of that.”

Mr Kharrazi’s position was reinforced rather more bluntly by the Defence Minister, Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, who dismissed the plan as “returning to the classic colonial era and is a form of return to cowboyism”.

Iran would like to see the removal of Saddam, who used chemical weapons on Iranian towns during the Iran-Iraq war, but Mr Kharrazi insisted that his overthrow by external forces was still not justified.

“It is not legitimate for others, regardless of how powerful they be, to intervene in other countries in order to change their regime,” he said.

“If the UN Security Council decides to use force against Iraq, that is something else. In that case the UN and its members have to comply. It does not mean that we are going to support any military operation against Iraq, but that would be a fact.”

However, many believe Iran would allow the thousands of armed Iraqi exiles living on its soil to cross the border and join the effort to oust Saddam.

The largest such group is commanded by Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, the Shia leader of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who has lived in Tehran for 20 years since fleeing Saddam’s regime.

He commands two divisions of armed refugees, the 12,000-strong Badr Corps, which consists of thousands of former Iraqi officers and soldiers. They took part in the 1991 Shia uprising against Saddam after the Gulf War and suffered heavy casualties.

Mr Kharrazi yesterday described them as “guests” in Iran and insisted that they did not obey Tehran’s orders, but he did not rule out their return as a fighting force. “We do not instruct them how to do this. They make their own decisions and choices,” he said.

Iran insists that it must be involved in the formation of any post-Saddam administration but the prospect of seeing one enemy topple another has left its fragmented regime divided.

Among its priorities are ensuring a role in government for Iraq’s majority Shia population, who have been ruled by a despotic Sunni regime for decades, and to see the elimination of thousands of Iranian Mujahidin Khalq fighters based in Iraq, which Britain has designated a terrorist organisation.

While the reformist President’s Government opposes a unilateral war, maintaining a policy of “active neutrality”, his conservative predecessor, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, has compared a US strike on Saddam to having “a python tackle a scorpion”.

However, Iran is angered at being included in President Bush’s “axis of evil”, alongside Iraq and North Korea.

Many voice concern at the prospect of the Islamic Republic being encircled by US forces in Afghanistan, bases in Central Asia, the Gulf and at the Incirlik airbase in Turkey.

Some fear that Iran could be “phase three” of the American War on Terror.

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