WORLD / Europe
Blair warns Iran on fate of 15 sailors
(AP)
Updated: 2007-03-26 06:28
LONDON - British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Iran on Sunday that the
fate of 15 British sailors and marines seized off the Iraqi coast was a
"fundamental" issue for his government, as Iran suggested the group may
be put on trial for violating its waters.
British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett spoke by telephone with
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki late Sunday, and reiterated
her country's stance that the British sailors and marines were operating
in Iraqi waters as they searched for smugglers at sea.
She asked that British diplomats be allowed to meet with the service
members and demanded their safe return, the Foreign Office said. In
Jerusalem, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also called for their
release.
At a European summit in Berlin, Blair said Iran's claim that the sailors
had crossed into Iranian territorial waters "is simply not true."
"I want to get (the situation) resolved in as easy and diplomatic a way
as possible," Blair said, but added he hoped the Iranians "understood how
fundamental an issue this is for the British government."
On a visit to the Middle East, Rice said the sailors and marines should
be released immediately and said "we all fully trust the British" that
they were not in Iranian waters when they were seized Friday.
But the Iranians also stuck by their view that the British had violated
Iranian territory.
In New York, Mottaki said his government was considering charges against
the British sailors and marines.
"The Iranian authorities intercepted these sailors and marines in Iranian
waters. and detained them in Iranian waters. This has happened in the
past, as well," Mottaki said in Persian through a translator.
"The charge against them is illegal entrance into Iranian waters,"
Mottaki said. "In terms of legal issues, it's under investigation."
Mottaki declined to provide the exact coordinates of where the Britons
were seized, saying this "very detailed information has been submitted to
the representatives of the United Kingdom."
A spokesman for Britain's defense ministry said they were not releasing
the coordinates.
Britain and the United States have said the sailors and marines had just
completed a search of a civilian vessel in the Iraqi part of the Shatt
al-Arab waterway when they were intercepted by the Iranian navy.
Iranian state news agency IRNA said British Ambassador Geoffrey Adams had
spoken in Tehran with Ibrahim Rahimpour, the foreign ministry official in
charge of western Europe, and asked about the condition of the British
sailors and marines.
He was told by Rahimpour that they were "well and sound" and that "legal
proceedings" were under way. No other details were provided.
In his conversation with Beckett, Mottaki gave no firm commitment on
allowing British diplomats to meet with the servicemen, a British
government spokesman said.
According to IRNA's English-language Web site, Adams said during the
meeting that the British service members had been deployed in Iraq to
establish security, and had no hostile intention toward Iran.
"Tehran has always exercised self-restraint in the face of border
violations by the British troops," Rahimpour was quoted as saying. But
after the "contradictory statements" in the seizure of the British, the
case "required an inquiry into such suspicious events."
Lord Triesman, a Foreign Office undersecretary who had held talks with
Iran's ambassador on Saturday, told Sky News there was good evidence the
men were in Iraqi waters, but that the issue of whether the sailors had
strayed into Iranian waters was only a technical one.
"I've been very clear throughout that the British forces do not ever
intentionally enter into Iranian waters," he said. "There's no reason for
them to do so, we don't intend to do so and I think people should accept
there's good faith in those assertions."
Iran's top military official, Gen. Ali Reza Afshar, said on Saturday the
seized Britons were taken to Tehran for questioning and had confessed to
what he called an "aggression into the Islamic Republic of Iran's
waters." He did not say what would happen to them but said all were being
treated well and were in good health.
Rajanews.com, a Persian Web site of supporters of Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, quoted a senior diplomat as saying the Britons were
still being held by Iranian armed forces and would not be released until
they promised "not do similar things in future."
The capture and detention of the British service personnel risks
escalating an already fraught relationship between Iran and the West.
The U.N. Security Council of Saturday agreed to moderately tougher
sanctions against Iran for its refusal to meet U.N. demands that it halt
uranium enrichment. Many in the West fear the country's nuclear program
is not for power generation but for arms making, a claim Iran denies.
The approved sanctions included ban on Iranian arms exports and freezing
the assets of 28 additional people and organizations involved in Iran's
nuclear and missile programs. About a third of those are linked to the
Revolutionary Guard, an elite corps whose navy had seized the British
sailors and marines.
British, Israeli and Saudi media reports on Sunday suggested that Iran
was hoping to trade the captured Britons for Iranian officials it claims
have been abducted by the West in recent months.
Ali Askari, former head of an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guard,
disappeared in Turkey six weeks ago; several months earlier, six Iranian
officials were captured by U.S. forces an Iranian liaison office in
Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish self-ruled region of Iraq. One was
later released.
Iran said it was a government liaison office. The U.S. military said
those detained were connected to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard faction
that funds and arms insurgents in Iraq.
Sobh-e-Sadegh, the official publication of the Revolutionary Guards, said
in a January article that it would be easy to kidnap Americans and
transfer them to "any location of choice" in retaliation for any attack.
Ahmad Bakhshaysh, a political analyst and professor in politics in
Tehran's Allameh University, said a prisoner swap was not what Iran
wanted.
"Iran is not after retaliation regarding abduction of its diplomats. ...
However, Iran will use this opportunity to show to the world public
opinion that Britons were (the) invader and Iran was victim of the
Westerners bullying policy," he said.
The capture of the British sailors and marines was not the first time
Iranians have taken Western forces by surprise in the border area.
American troops working with Iraqi border guards inside the frontier were
attacked by a much larger Iranian military unit in September east of the
Diyala province town of Balad Ruz, 45 miles northeast of Baghdad, a U.S.
Army spokesman said.
No Americans were hurt, but four Iraqi soldiers, an interpreter, and an
Iraqi border policeman remain missing.
There is a lot of open terrain," military spokesman Lt. Col. Mike
Donnelly said in an e-mail. "Visual sighting and happenstance encounters
from a distance occur routinely."
Top World News
� Iran: British sailors admitted aggression
� Small tsunami hits Japan after quake
� Cheney accuses House of not supporting troops in Iraq
� Attacks on Iraq crackdown leave 47 dead
� Democrats challenge Bush with Iraq timetable
Today's Top News
� "China to maintain stable, fast economic growth"
� Donald Tsang wins in HK election
� 1 dead, 162 injured in Japan quake
� Iran: British sailors admitted aggression
� Taiwan 'constitution' proposal slammed
Most Commented/Read Stories in 48 Hours
Learn Chinese, Learning Chinese, Learning Materials, Mandarin audio lessons, Chinese writing lessons, Chinese vocabulary lists, About chinese characters, News in Chinese, Go to China, Travel to China, Study in China, Teach in China, Dictionaries, Learn Chinese Painting, Your name in Chinese, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese songs, Chinese proverbs, Chinese poetry, Chinese tattoo, Beijing 2008 Olympics, Mandarin Phrasebook, Chinese editor, Pinyin editor, China Travel, Travel to Beijing, Travel to Tibet
