London – British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Sunday that the 15 British sailors and marines captured by Iran as they searched for smugglers off the Iraqi coast were not in Iranian waters and warned that Britain viewed their situation as “very serious.” The group was seized at gunpoint on Friday, and the Foreign Office in London said British officials do not know where Iran is holding them.
Speaking at an EU 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.”
Britain said its diplomats met with Iranian officials in Tehran on Sunday where their demand for access to the group was denied after Iran refused to say where they were being held.
“This is a very serious situation,” Blair said.
In New York, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said British Foreign Minister Margaret Beckett had asked to speak with him directly, likely later Sunday. Mottaki said the 15 Britons were accused of illegally entering Iranian waters: “In terms of legal issues, it’s under investigation.”
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 television said the ministry summoned British Ambassador Geoffrey Adams “to protest the illegal entry of British sailors into Iranian territorial waters.” It gave no details about the meeting.
But a British Foreign Office spokeswoman said, “This morning’s meeting was at our request. (Officials) asked for the immediate release of the detained personnel and we asked where they were being held.”
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.
Iran has described the incident as a “blatant aggression,” but Britain has repeatedly insisted the sailors were in Iraqi waters in the Shatt al Arab waterway between Iraq and Iran.
The EU also has been pushing hard diplomatically to secure the sailors’ release. Germany, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, had its ambassador in Tehran raise the issue with the Iranian government.
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 on 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.
But 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.
U.S. News and World Report, citing a U.S. Army report out of Iraq, said the capture of the British soldiers was not the first time Iranians have taken Western forces by surprise in the border area.
The magazine said American troops working with Iraqi border guards within Iraq were attacked by a much larger Iranian military unit in September. U.S. News said no Americans were hurt in the incident, but four Iraqi soldiers, an interpreter, and an Iraqi border policeman remain missing.
Associated Press Writers Paul Ames in Berlin, Robert Reid in Amman, Jordan, Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, and Justin Bergman in New York contributed to this report.
