IRNA quoted an informed source who did not want to be named as saying the suspects were picked up in Iranian towns and cities close to the border with Afghanistan. 

The Iranian sweep comes one day after an Iranian official called U.S. allegations that Iranians were helping al Qaeda fugitives in Afghanistan outdated and inaccurate. 

The arrests also follows harsh criticism leveled by Iranian officials at President Bush for naming Iran as part of an "axis of evil" supporting terrorism. Iraq and North Korea were also named in Bush's State of the Union address last month. 

The suspects include women and children, with some holding Dutch, French, British or Spanish passports, the source said. Embassies of those countries have been informed of the arrests, the source said. 

Some Iranian officials have said that any al Qaeda or Taliban members found in Iran would be returned to their country of origin. 

Crossing Pakistan to Iran
Those picked up were still being interrogated, and preliminary questioning had not shown any of the arrested people to be significant members of the Taliban or al Qaeda, the source said. 

He also said that the 150 people crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan shortly after the U.S. bombing began last October. They traveled about 750 kilometers (465 miles) through southern Pakistan before reaching Iran, he said. 

Responding to a British Broadcasting Corp. report, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told CNN on Wednesday that the United States had given Iran a dossier alleging his country interfered in Afghanistan. Asefi said his government could act only on "timely and accurate" information. 

Sources said Iran received the documents in late 2001 during U.N.-sponsored multilateral talks in Germany about Afghanistan.

President Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the BBC that the United States gave Iran information about alleged activities of a unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards in Afghanistan. The guards are under control of Iran's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini. 

Khalilzad said the United States accused the guard units of helping to arm and finance dissident Afghans in western Afghanistan and helping al Qaeda terrorists, and possibly Taliban leaders, flee Afghanistan through Iran.