Iran's President Mohammad Khatami arrived in Saudi Arabia for talks with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz on the crisis between Iraq and the United States.

Khatami is to meet Crown Prince Abdullah, on Saturday after spending two days on a private pilgrimage to Islam's holiest sites Mecca and Medina, Iran's official IRNA news agency said earlier.

It is the second visit to Saudi Arabia by an Iranian head of state since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The election of the moderate Khatami as Iranian president in 1997 prompted a gradual thaw in relations culminating in his landmark 1999 visit to the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia has pressed ahead with the rapprochement despite misgivings in the United States, which has said it regards Iran as part of an "axis of evil", along with Iraq and North Korea.

The longtime rivals inked a security pact in April last year during a visit to Tehran by Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz, the first Saudi interior minister to travel there since the revolution.

Shared opposition to US threats of military action against Iraq has pushed Iran and the pro-Western Gulf states yet further together in recent months.

During a visit to Tehran early last month, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal joined with Iranian officials in speaking out strongly against US President George W. Bush's push to oust Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

IRAN READIES FOR IRAQI WAR REFUGEES

Khatami's visit to the Saudi Kingdom as Tehran warned that more than 500,000 Iraqi refugees could flee towards its borders in the event of an American attack against President Saddam Hussein's regime.

A senior Iranian official responsible for refugees, Ahmad Hussaini, said the country's interior ministry had set up a national crisis centre to cope with a possible influx of refugees.

He said that no Iraqis would be allowed to enter Iranian territory and that camps would be set up inside Iraqi territory on the border area.

During the Gulf War in 1991, Iran was taken by surprise when more than one million Iraqi Kurd and Shia refugees fled across its border.

Now it appears that Iran has made extensive preparations to provide humanitarian aid to Iraqi refugees in the event of a new war in the region.

Mr Hussaini says his country has already put in place relief facilities to deal with up to 50,000 Iraqi refugees.

He added that Iran could provide accommodation and other facilities for up to 900,000 people.

PHOTO CAPTION

Iran's President Mohammad Khatami arrived in Saudi Arabia for talks with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz on the crisis between Iraq and the United States.