There are reports that Iranian military aircraft have landed at Bamiyan city airport in northern Afghanistan, within artillery range of advancing Taliban forces.

Sources said Iran's military aircraft began arriving yesterday but it could not be immediately confirmed how many planes had landed, nor their type, or what they were carrying.

The flights followed a Taliban appeal to the UN yesterday to halt Iranian interference in Afghanistan. This included supply of arms to pro-Iranian factions through Bamiyan airport, Taliban authorities said.

Separately, foreign aid organisations confirmed the Taliban militia were advancing on Bamiyan. Afghan Islamic Press earlier reported that militia troops were about 10 km from the city, which is the last stronghold ofthe minority Shiite Muslim community.

Meanwhile, Pakistan today dismissed Tehran's allegations that Islamabad was responsible for the killing of the diplomats but condemned the act and urged Iran and Afghanistan to resolve their differences through peaceful talks.

Iranian deputy foreign minister, Mohsin Aminzadeh, said that the two remaining diplomats are still alive since they had escaped when the Taliban stormed into the Iranian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif on August 8.

The Security Council got into the act after urgent unscheduled consultations last night. President Hans Dahlgren said the council welcomed ongoing plans for a joint fact-finding mission with the participation of Iran, Pakistan, and the UN.

The council asked Taliban to ensure the safe release of the two remaining diplomats still believed to be under their custody. Dahlgren said that no deadline had been set but the council was keeping the issue under review.

Eleven Iranian diplomats and one journalist went missing since Taliban tookover Mazar-e-Sharif and it was only a month later, after international hue and cry and threatening Iranian military exercises on the border, that the Taliban admitted yesterday that nine of the 11 had been killed.

Though the Taliban enjoys no status at the UN, its Supreme leader Mullah Omar wrote a letter to the Secretary General informing him about the killing.

They were either ``intentionally'' or ``unintentionally'' killed by ``unidentified'' Taliban soldiers, Omar admitted. But he said the soldiers had acted on their own and that the Taliban leadership had nothing to do with the killings.

Expressing readiness to cooperate with repatriation of the bodies, he alleged that Iran was supporting groups opposed to Taliban and called on the world body to consider the issue.

Tehran, which recently conducted massive military operations involving 70,000 troops and its air force, plans to carry out more exercises on the border. Earlier reports had said Iran may not directly invade Afghanistan but arm andorganise fighters of now defeated northern alliance to fight Taliban and provide air support. The northern alliance comprises mostly Tajik, Uzbek and Shiite Muslims.

Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has meanwhile met ousted Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani and told him, ``The instability in Afghanistan was a threat on our borders, to our national security, whose defense is our right.''