"Considering the historic support and strategic relations with the Islamic republic, Iraq will oppose any action that is against Iran's security," Nechirvan Barzani said in a meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"We believe that the security of Iran is as important as that of Iraq and problems must be solved through cooperation," Barzani, son of president of the autonomous Kurdish region Massud Barzani, was quoted as saying by the Iranian president's website.

In July, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards launched a major offensive against rebels from the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), targeting their bases along the Iran-Iraq border.

The Guards said they destroyed PJAK compounds inside Iraqi territory, while claiming to have killed more than 50 rebels and losing eight men in the fighting.

PJAK rebels often clash with Iranian forces, and their bases in the mountainous border regions of Iraqi Kurdistan from which they launch their attacks are bombed in retaliation.

Iran intends to continue the operation "to secure our borders, for the terrorists not to infiltrate and harm our people," an operations commander, Colonel Hamid Ahmadi, told foreign media in Tehran on August 17.

Before launching the attack, Iran had criticised Massud Barzani for what it called providing the PJAK with a vast safe haven along the border.

On Thursday, Ahmadinejad said Tehran supported "a secure and developed Iraq which would be in the interest of Iran and the region."

"The common enemies of Iran and Iraq ... are devising new plans to spread insecurity in the region," Ahmadinejad said in an allusion to Kurdish fighters, whom Tehran says are backed by arch-foes Israel and the United States.