The police fired several rounds of tear gas to disperse some 700 Iranians, mostly students, who had gathered outside the Wisma UN in Kuala Lumpur.

According to the Star, the group had wanted to submit a memorandum protesting developments in their homeland.

At about 5.30pm, the police fired a warning shot after protesters refused to heed the repeated warnings to disperse.

Following this, the Iranians gathered at the Wisma HELP carpark, shouting 'Allahu Akbar' (God is great) and started singing the Iranian national anthem.

Five minutes later, the police started shooting the tear gas into the crowd.

"The Iranians rapidly dispersed after facing nine rounds of tear gas shots. The tear gas spilled into nearby buildings especially Wisma HELP, where students were in their lecture rooms," read the report.

The incident also brought traffic in the area to a standstill.

'Don't recognise Ahmadinejad'

AFP meanwhile reported that the protesters wanted to hand over a protest note demanding the world body nullify the Iranian elections.

"We want all the countries in the world not to recognise Ahmadinejad as Iranian president. The election was fraud. The actual winner is (Mir Hossein) Mousavi," Ali Bozrgmer, a 28-year-old student told AFP.

He said the protest lasted for about one hour during which they shouted slogans such as "Where is my vote?" and "Ahmadinejad go to hell".

The protesters, who were mainly students from the local Iranian community of some 9,000 people, then continued their march along a busy road outside the UN building, he said.

Witnesses said the police warned protesters to end the demonstration before firing tear gas.

"The police gave us warning to disperse. But they suddenly fired several rounds of tear gas. We ran away," Bozrgmer said, adding that they plan more protests.

Remain human in uniform

In another development, an international human rights expert said that a policeman should not stop being human when putting on the uniform.

Rather, the policemen should be brave in protecting and promoting human rights as it is not a contradiction to policing.

Commonwealth Secretariat Human Rights head Dr Purna Sen said: "When they don the uniform, they still retain their human being qualities and they inherit rights that all humans possess."

"Protecting and promoting human rights is not a contradiction to policing; in fact, it is complementary," she was quoted as saying by Bernama.

Sen was speaking at the workshop for Asean police trainers at the Royal Malaysia Police College in Kuala Lumpur today.

She also noted that it was hard to find any police force in the world which was not subjected to criticism on their human rights record.

"There have been criticisms of Malaysia's record in policing and sometimes too often, some of them are valid.

"I think it is important the Royal Malaysian Police hear it seriously and see what is valid in them," she said, adding that the main problem would be if the criticisms were not addressed properly.

The workshop, jointly organised by the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Malaysian government, is the first of its kind in this region.

Police trainers from Asean countries, excluding Burma and Cambodia, are participating in the five-day workshop.

Malaysia has sent 17 police trainers for the course.