"The EFPs are way down -- I am talking about terms of a dozen, 20 in Iraq in a month from maybe 60, 80," US Army Lieutenant General Thomas Metz told journalists.

EFPs are a deadly type of shaped charge that is particularly effective at penetrating armor.

Metz, director of the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO), a program which aims to prevent roadside attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, said the EFPs have been deployed against US forces with lethal effectiveness.

"They have represented over time probably five percent of IEDs, and would represent as much as 35 percent of the casualties."

The general added however that "in the past three months they have been way down."

"We must assume that someone has made a decision on the Shia side connected to Iran to bring them down," he said.

Washington has long accused Tehran of stoking anti-US violence in Iraq, particularly by supplying arms and roadside bombs to Shiite insurgents -- an allegation that Iran has vehemently denied.

Asked if the reduction meant that the Iranian government or the elite Quds Force -- a special unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guard -- had made a conscious decision to pull back its support of the Iraqi insurgency, Metz answered: "I am not in the intel business but that's the conclusion I would draw."

He added: "The EFP explosions are down, finding them are down, the casualties from them are down."

The general said the reduction might also be due in part to the Pentagon's targeting of the groups that use such weapons.

"We've been focusing on the networks that we think are using EFPs," Metz said.

While officials have been heartened by the decline of EFP casualties, Metz said the US military has noted a worrisome rise in the use of IEDs (improvised explosive devices) against coalition forces in Afghanistan.

"There is a rise in IEDs," Metz said, adding however that EFPs are still relative rare in Afghanistan.

"The Taliban, Al-Qaeda and other insurgents found direct fire and indirect fire not to be as effective against coalition forces," said the general, who added that the number of casualties in Afghanistan from IEDs now exceed those from direct and indirect fire.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi government spokesman told a media roundtable at the Pentagon that Baghdad also had noted the apparent change in Tehran's posture toward the insurgency.

"Iran has shown a positive stance since last year," spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said, crediting diplomacy between Iraq and Iran.

"I think that the government of Iraq played a major role in this," he said, citing in particular reassurances made by Iraq to Iran regarding the recently concluded Status of Forces Agreement reached by Washington and Baghdad last month.

Both Iraq and the United States have endorsed the controversial military pact that includes a timetable for the complete withdrawal of American troops from the country by the end of 2011.

The two sides had been racing to secure a bilateral agreement to replace the UN mandate currently governing the more than 150,000 US-led troops stationed in the country, which expires on December 31.

"The assurances that were being given by Mr Maliki (Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki) that the SOFA is not going to be against them ... helped reducing the temperature with Iran," al-Dabbagh said.

"At the end, we do need to have a deep dialogue with Iran," said al-Dabbagh.

"Iran should understand that in order to be a good partner they should respect the international law and refrain from interfering not only in Iraq, (but also) in the region."

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