New York (PTI): US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates had once privately expressed his reservations over an attack on Iran, saying such a move "will create generations of jihadists", a media report said on Saturday.

The remark, according to the latest issue of New Yorker magazine, was made at an off-the-record lunch meeting with Democratic Senators late last year.

"We will create generations of jihadists and our grand children will be battling our enemies here in America," Gates is quoted as saying in the magazine.

The article, by investigative journalist Seymour M Hersh, said the remarks stunned the Democrats and one of them asked whether Gates was speaking for President George Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney. "Let's just say that I am here speaking for myself," Gates is quoted as replying.

The magazine also said that a spokesman for Gates confirmed that he discussed consequences of a strike at the meeting, but refused to give details.

The 6000-word article said US has been funding Iranian dissident terrorist groups Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), the Kurdish separatist Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) and, according to some sources, the Jundallah, or Iranian People's Resistance Movement.

It said the US Congress had last year acceded to a USD 400 million request from Bush "to fund major escalation of covert operations against Iran designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership."

"The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Ara and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations," Hersh wrote, adding, "clandestine operations against Iran are not new and Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year."