Baghdad ? The American ambassador to Iraq scolded his Iranian counterpart in a groundbreaking meeting Tuesday for Tehran’s alleged arming and training of Shiite militias. But he agreed to set up a subcommittee with Iran and Iraq to work on stabilizing the country.

Speaking to reporters after a second session in two months with the Iranian envoy, Ambassador Ryan Crocker called the seven-hour meeting “full and frank,” diplomatic language for difficult.

The Bush administration does not appear to expect much if anything from the talks but seems willing to go forward with them because the high-powered and bipartisan Iraq Study Group, in a report late last year, recommended contacts with Iran and Syria in a bid to end or ameliorate outside influences in Iraq as part of a plan to end the conflict.

For its part, Iran appears to be enjoying the spectacle and prestige of negotiating with world’s only superpower after more than a quarter-century freeze in open diplomatic contact.

“We discussed ways forward, and one of the issues we discussed was the formation of a security subcommittee that would address at an expert or technical level some issues relating to security, be that support for violent militias, al-Qaida or border security,” Crocker said.

But he warned progress was impossible until Iran matches its behavior on the ground with its declarations backing an independent and stable Iraq.

“The fact is, as we made very clear in today’s talks, that over the roughly two months since our last meeting we’ve actually seen militia-related activity that could be attributed to Iranian support go up and not down,” Crocker said, citing testimony from detainees and confiscated weapons and ammunition as evidence.

Two sides of story

In a later conference call with reporters in Washington, Crocker said portions of the long exchange were heated.

“I would not describe this as a shouting match throughout, but we were real clear on what our problems with their behavior was, and I just didn’t hesitate to let them know,” he said.

Crocker said he expected the session to be testy, given the extensive list of U.S. complaints and the overall difficulty of the relationship.

In a separate news conference after the talks, Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi countered that Tehran was helping Iraq deal with the security situation but Iraqis were “victimized by terror and the presence of foreign forces” on their territory.

Detention issues

Qomi said his delegation also demanded the release of five Iranians detained by U.S. forces in Iraq. The United States claims the five were linked to Iran’s elite Quds Force, which Washington accuses of arming and training Iraqi militants. Iran says the five are diplomats who were legally in Iraq.

“There are also Iranian citizens who have been detained on legally entering Iraq,” Qomi said. “We demanded their release too. We discussed the creation of a mechanism to implement what we achieved in the first round of talks. They (the Americans) acknowledged making mistakes and this is a step forward in itself and it’s now up to the Americans to rectify their mistakes.”

He did not say what those mistakes were.

Qomi told The Associated Press that 20 to 30 other Iranian citizens were in U.S. custody.

The detention of four Iranian-Americans in Iran has deepened tensions between Washington and Tehran, whose relations were already strained over Iran’s nuclear program and its support for radical militant groups like Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas and by U.S. military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who chaired the meeting, said experts would meet as early as today to work out the structure and mechanism of the committee.