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Gunmen in Iraqi army uniforms kidnapped a senior Iranian diplomat in Baghdad on Sunday.

"We are treating this as a kidnapping," said an Iraqi government official on Tuesday.

The official said the diplomat, the second secretary at the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, was snatched in central Karrada district on Sunday by 30 gunmen dressed in uniforms belonging to a special Iraqi army unit that collaborates with US military forces in Iraq.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini blamed US forces for the kidnapping of Jalal Sharafi, saying his attackers were attached to Iraq's Defense Ministry "which works under the supervision of American forces".

The ministry said the Swiss and Iraqi ambassadors to Iran had been summoned and were to receive formal protests against the abduction. The Swiss Embassy handles US affairs in Iran, due to it having no diplomatic relations with Washington.

US forces in Iraq have arrested a number of Iranians, including diplomats, in the past two months, and are still holding five Iranians. Washington accuses Teheran of aiding militants fighting US forces in Iraq with US President George W. Bush having pledged to disrupt such support.

"It seems that this terrorist act has been committed in the framework of Bush's order and with the goal of escalating the confrontation with Iran," Iran's Ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, was quoted by Iranian state television as saying.

A US military spokesman denied any US connection to the incident, which threatens to escalate already tense relations between the United States and Iran, currently divided over Teheran's nuclear program.

"We are not aware of any mission that even resembles this incident," a US military spokesman in Baghdad, Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver, said.

Hosseini stated Sharafi was kidnapped outside a branch of Iran's Bank Melli in Baghdad. The Iraqi official revealed the gunmen pulled up in 4x4s and a BMW and were dressed as members of the Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion, a special operations unit tied to US forces.

The official announced that police on the scene opened fire on the gunmen and arrested six of them. However, in a rather intriguing turn of events, another security force later came to the police station and claimed the six to allegedly transport them to the Serious Crimes building in Baghdad. It was later discovered that they never arrived there.

Shi'ite Iran resumed diplomatic relations with Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein and the empowerment of Iraq's Shi'ite majority after US-sponsored elections.

However, the ruling Iraqi government has been critical of recent raids by American forces arresting Iranians working with diplomatic offices in Iraq.

(China Daily via agencies February 7, 2007)