``The fantasy of a unipolar world ruled by a single superpower is but an illusion,'' Khatami, the first Iranian leader to address the UN General Assembly in twelve years, said yesterday.

Iran has no diplomatic relations with the United States but Khatami has sought to tone down nearly two decades of hostility with the country sometimes known in Iran as ``the great Satan.''

In the highest level contact between the two nations in two decades, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Iran's deputy foreign minister sat in on a meeting over Afghanistan, but the two did not discuss their own relations.

Khatami, wearing the flowing black robe and turban of a senior Shiite cleric, blasted the Taliban militia that rules most of neighbouring Afghanistan, and with which his country faces a militarystand-off.

``Afghanistan, the land of people of dignity and culture, has now been turned into a haven for violence, terrorism and production and trafficking in narcotics,'' said Khatami, whose Islamic government has accused the Taliban of giving the faith a bad name with policies that restrict women's rights.

Tensions between Iran and the Taliban have risen since the Taliban overran the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan on August 8 and killed several Iranian diplomats posted there.

Iran has since deployed about 200,000 troops on its border with Afghanistan, amid growing demands for vengeance by mobs of Iranian demonstrators.

At the meeting over Afghanistan, Albright expressed US regret over the deaths of the Iranian diplomats, and called for the punishment of those involved in the killings, State Department spokesman James Rubin said.

Earlier yesterday, Khatami met Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan, whose country is alleged to be the main backer of the Taliban.

Khatami alsodenied US charges that Iran is a sponsor of international terrorism and is trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction.

``Eradication of terrorism must be concurrent with a global search for justice. This assertion should in no way be interpreted as a justification for any form of terrorism,'' said Khatami.

``At the threshold of the third millennium, the world also needs to be liberated from the nightmare of nuclear war and weapons of mass destruction,'' he said.

His speech was disrupted by an Iranian woman who shouted out, ``Khatami is a murderer,'' before being whisked away by UN security.

The woman, Laila Jazayeri, 37, entered the United Nations on a valid UN pass for international organisations, UN officials said. They wouldn't name the organization but said the woman was based in London, UN officials said, speaking on condition they not be identified.

Outside the UN building, two Iranian exile groups staged protests timed to coincide with Khatami's speech.

The theme of both protests wasthat Khatami, who was widely hailed as a moderate when he became president in August last year, has proved as uncompromising and brutal toward dissenters as the mullahs who ran Iran before him.

In his speech, Khatami also called for reform at the United Nations, saying that the veto power exercised by the five permanent members of the Security Council should be abolished.

Khatami, a moderate whose landslide election in May 1997 was largely due to the votes of women and young Iranians, said that ``the traditional outlook, based on the erroneous notion of superiority of men over women, does injustice to men, women and humanity as a whole.''