Pace Questions Whether Iran Arming Iraq

Gen. Peter Pace, the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff speaks at a news conference Tuesday Feb. 13, 2007 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Pace said Tuesday there was no evidence the Iranian government was supplying Iraqi insurgents with deadly roadside bombs, in apparent contradiction to claims by other U.S. military and administration officials.(AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana) (Tatan Syuflana - AP)

A military official on Pace's staff said the general stands by his comments. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

Asked if Pace had vetted the information that went into Sunday's briefing, the official said Pace was aware of what was going to be presented in Baghdad, but that the comment about involvement at the highest levels of Iranian government was not included in the material Pace was given.

The Joint Chiefs chairman is the senior military adviser to the president, but he commands no troops and is not in the chain of command that runs from the president to the secretary of defense to commanders in the field.

The U.S. accusations against Iran have also drawn in an Austrian arms company.

Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Tuesday that American troops have recovered more than 100 "Steyr .50 HS" rifles in Iraq, part of an Austrian consignment of 800 such weapons delivered to Iran over American protests that they could be given to insurgents.

The Austrian government approved the sale of the rifles, made by precision weapons maker Steyr Mannlicher GmbH, after it concluded in 2004 that they would be used to fight narcotics smugglers.

"We checked the proposal very thoroughly," Austrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Astrid Harz said, noting that the situation in Iraq and the region in 2003-2004 was very different than it is now.

"What happened to the weapons then is the responsibility of the Iranians," Harz said.

Franz Holzschuh, Steyr's CEO, said the company had not officially been contacted by anyone to verify the serial numbers on the rifles. He said there was a possibility the weapons were reproductions and that there were "thousands" of these in circulation.

"Fact is, we never delivered to Iraq," he said.

U.S. officials could not confirm the validity of the report, said William Wanlund, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Austria.

"Obviously, if the reports are true, it would be profoundly disturbing," he said.

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Associated Press writers Pauline Jelinek in Washington, Raphael G. Satter in London and Veronika Oleksyn in Vienna, Austria, contributed to this report.