Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi arrived in Iraq Tuesday for talks with the new government, marking the highest level visit from Tehran to Baghdad since former president Saddam Hussain's ouster, reports Xinhua.

"Kharrazi arrived in Baghdad and he will hold talks with his Iraqi counterpart Hoshiar al-Zibari," Laith Kubba, Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's spokesman, told reporters.

He said Kharrazi would also meet the prime minister besides holding talks with Iraqi officials on political and economic issues.

Kharrazi's visit reflects increasingly warm ties of Iran, a Shia Muslim state, with Iraq's new Shia dominant government. Baghdad and Tehran restored diplomatic ties in September last year.

The continuing violence, meanwhile, claimed the lives of five soldiers. Four Iraqi soldiers were killed in a clash with unidentified gunmen outside a power plant in Mussayab, some 60 km south of here.

In another attack, unidentified men in two cars gunned down a soldier in the mainly Shia Sadr city neighbourhood here.

Insurgents also attacked a US military base and damaged a US Humvee jeep after clashes in Khan Dhari near Abu Ghraib prison, west of here.

A fierce clash erupted Tuesday morning between US troops and insurgents after a group of fighters pounded a US military base. Following the clash, insurgents detonated a roadside bomb, destroying the US military jeep.

Insurgents have mounted attacks on Iraq's fledgling security forces and the army in a bid to cripple the country's new government. 

--Indo-Asian News Service