WASHINGTON, March 23: The United States has delivered visas for Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and his delegation to attend the United Nations meetings in New York, the State Department said on Friday.

“The passports with the visas have been delivered,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told a briefing in Washington. He said visas for 39 Iranian officials -- including Mr Ahmedinejad, diplomats and security guards -- were in the hands of the Iranians as of 10am local time in Bern, Switzerland.

Mr McCormack, however, said that because some visa forms for the air crew were incomplete, those were still being processed.

"At the end of the day, everybody gets the visas that they need in order to travel to the United Nations," he told reporters.

Mr McCormack made the remarks hours after Iran accused the United States of delaying the visa for President Ahmadinejad who wants to participate in a UN Security Council meeting in New York on his country’s nuclear programme.

Mr McCormack noted that as host of the United Nations, the United States is bound by "host country obligations" to issue visas for all delegates to the UNSC meetings.

Earlier on Friday, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said they still did not have the visas, “despite completing application formality for the visa and the US administration officials' promises to grant a visa at the earliest possible time.”

The official said that Mr Ahmedinejad was to go to New York to "defend Iranian right" for peaceful nuclear technologies at the Security Council session on Friday, which will set the time for a vote of the 15-member council on a new resolution that could tighten the sanctions on Tehran.