TEHRAN, Iran (AP):

Iran's Foreign Ministry said yesterday that a confrontation between Iranian boats and United States Navy ships in the Gulf over the weekend was "'something normal" and was resolved. It suggested the Iranian boats had not recognised the U.S. vessels.

The Pentagon said that in the incident early Sunday, five small Iranian boats repeatedly "charged" U.S. warships in the Gulf's Hormuz Strait and dropped boxes in the water.

The boats, believed to be from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's navy, warned the U.S. ships that they would set up "explosions", a U.S. Defence Department official said.

The U.S. craft were on the verge of opening fire when the Iranian boats fled, an official at the Pentagon said, calling the incident "the most serious provocation of its sort" in the Gulf. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorised to speak on the record.

Played dowwn incident

But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammed Ali Hosseini, played down the incident, suggesting it was an issue of misidentification. He did not comment on the U.S. claims of the Iranian boats' actions.

"That is something normal that takes place every now and then for each party, and it (the problem) is settled after identification of the two parties,"' he told the state news agency IRNA.