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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad flew into Kabul on Wednesday for summit talks on a visit overlapping with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was in Afghanistan to review a US troop surge.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office confirmed Ahmadinejad's arrival as Gates toured a training centre for Afghan army officers and non-commissioned officers at Camp Blackhorse outside the Afghan capital.

"They will discuss bilateral relations between the two countries and expansion of economic relations between the two countries," Karzai spokesman Siamak Hirawi told AFP.

They were scheduled to discuss economic projects such as a railway line from Tajikistan through Afghanistan to Iran, Hirawi said.

The two leaders were scheduled to hold a news conference later Wednesday after their first meeting since their controversial re-elections in 2009.

Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for the withdrawal of US-led troops from Afghanistan, on Iran's eastern border, while US officials have long accused Iran of maintaining links to Islamist insurgents in the country.

Speaking at a brief press conference at the military training centre, Gates said the United States wanted Afghanistan to have "good relations" with all its neighbours.

Despite their rivalry, Washington and Tehran are both sworn enemies of the extremist Sunni Muslim militia which ruled in Kabul from 1996, before being overthrown in the 2001 US-led invasion.

Washington has made a number of efforts to involve all of Afghanistan's neighbours, including Iran, in restoring stability to the country.

But they have been complicated by the lack of diplomatic relations between Tehran and Washington, and the standoff over Iran's nuclear programme.

Wednesday's overlapping visits came as Washington struggled to rally international support for fresh sanctions over the Iranian nuclear drive, with China and Russia still apparently reluctant to sign on.

Israel's UN ambassador on Tuesday said prospects for crippling UN sanctions against Iran were "grim" because Russia and China want to use diplomacy to persuade Iran to scale back its nuclear ambitions.

Shiite Iran, which has close ethnic and religious ties with Afghanistan, has long suffered from the effects of opium production in its neighbour, with easily available heroin fuelling a big rise in drug use at home.

Afghanistan is the source of 90 percent of the world's heroin.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband was meanwhile to press the Afghan government to step up efforts for a political solution with the Taliban to bring the dragging conflict to an end.

"My argument today is that now is the time for the Afghans to pursue a political settlement with as much vigour and energy as we are pursuing the military and civilian effort," he was to say in a US speech.

"The political settlement needs to be external as well as internal, involving all of Afghanistan's neighbours," Miliband added in his speech, to be delivered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology later Wednesday.

AFP