BAGHDAD - Turkey and Iran told U.S.-led occupiers to restore order in neighboring Iraq, after a spate of bombings, ethnic clashes and as thousands protested the attempted assassination of a Shiite leader, AFP said.

Iran warned the U.S.-led coalition after an attempt to bomb one of Iraq's four leading Shiite clerics, Grand Ayatollah Seyed Mohammed Said al-Hakim. More than 3,000 Shiite Muslims took to the streets of Baghdad outside the headquarters of the U.S.-named governing council to protest the bombing and recent ethnic clashes chanting, "No to America! No to Saddam!"

Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, condemned Sunday's bombing in the holy city of Najaf as part of a plot against Islam and Shiites, the majority in both Iraq and Iran.

President Khatami of Iran also said on Monday that the occupying forces are responsible for security in Iraq. And its foreign ministry said that, "The Islamic Republic of Iran is worried about the intensification of instability and insecurity in Iraq and holds the occupying forces responsible for the incident."

And banners denounced the killing over the weekend of at least eight ethnic Shiite Turkmen in the northern cities of Kirkuk and Tuz Khurmatu.

Turkey, a NATO member that refused to let U.S. troops deploy from its territory during the Iraq war, was more guarded in its criticism of the coalition.

"We have reminded them that they need to do their best to establish peace there," Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told reporters.

"It is not possible for us to accept the recent treatment of the Turkmen," Gul said.

The clashes came as Turkey weighed sending as many as 10,000 troops to join an international security force in Iraq.

The United States will send more troops to Iraq "in a minute" if the top U.S. commander in the region asks for them, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said.

The remains of one of many recent victims of the unrest in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, arrived near their final resting place Monday, flown into Geneva after a memorial service in the UN envoy's Brazilian hometown of Rio de Janeiro.

The widely respected diplomat, who was also the UN high commissioner for human rights, was among 23 people killed in a suicide truck bombing at UN headquarters in Baghdad last Tuesday.