Fereydoun Jahani, the Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Iraq last week, is "alive and well", the official IRNA news agency quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi as saying on Monday.

Kharrazi said that Iran would make utmost effort to have Jahani freed.

A video released earlier on Sunday by Arab-language Al-Arabiya TV channel showed Jihani along with nine forms of his identification, his passport and a business card.

Claiming themselves as "Islamic Army in Iraq", the kidnappers accused Jihani of fanning sectarian clashes in Iraq, warning Iran not to interfere in Iraq's affairs, according to Al-Arabiya.

Iran's state television and IRNA later said that the Iranian embassy in Baghdad had confirmed Jahani was kidnapped.

However, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi refused to comment on whether Jahani were kidnapped at a press conference held Sunday night.

He said that Jahani had "disappeared" and there was no reliable information at present about the motives behind this action.

Iran, a Shiite Muslim country with close ties to Iraq's majority Shiite population, is blamed for supporting Iraq's Shiite political parties with money and intelligence, an allegation strongly denied by the Iranian government.

Jihani became the second senior diplomat kidnapped in Iraq in recent weeks.

An Egyptian diplomat called Mohammed Mamdouh Helmi Qutb was abducted on July 23 and later freed on July 26.

More than 70 foreigners have been seized in Iraq in recent months by insurgents who want to force coalition members to pullout their forces and foreign companies to stop supporting coalition troops.

On April 15, Khalil Naimi, first secretary at Iran's embassy in Baghdad, was murdered in Baghdad a day after Tehran sent a peace mission to help end conflicts between US forces and militant Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

(Xinhua News Agency August 10, 2004)