"Treacherous" U.S. breaks pacts, Iran tells Iraq

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran warned Iraq on Sunday an "intensely treacherous" United States habitually broke pacts like one it recently concluded on American troops quitting Iraq by 2011.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued the warning to Iraq's visiting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, whose country last year reached the agreement on the pullout of U.S. troops now numbering more than 140,000.

Maliki met Khamenei in Tehran a few days after U.S. forces in Iraq came under an Iraqi mandate, a move Maliki says restored sovereignty nearly six years after U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein.

Khamenei "pointed at the American government's mischief and efforts to consolidate its domination and plunder the resources of the country," state television said.

Commenting on the U.S.-Iraq security pact on U.S. forces, whose combat troops are due to pull out of towns by mid-2009, Khamenei added:

"The Americans are intensely treacherous and break pacts to the extent that they do not have real friendship even with their close allies in the region."

Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's top authority, repeated Iran's view that the presence of U.S. and British forces was largely to blame for violence and other problems in Iraq.

He held talks with Maliki on the same day as a suicide bomber killed at least 35 people and wounded more than twice as many at a Shi'ite shrine in Baghdad.

Many of the casualties were pilgrims from Iran, like Iraq a predominantly Shi'ite Muslim country.