France will on Tuesday propose that Iran be invited to join a "contact group" of countries and multilateral institutions to co-ordinate Nato's peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.

The proposal by Jacques Chirac, French president, may irritate the US at a two-day Nato summit in the Latvian capital of Riga, not least because of Washington's suspicions of Iran's nuclear programme. A senior French official also said that, if emergencies arose, France would relax restrictions on the movements of its troops in Afghanistan.