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.
Blair said Iran’s claim that the sailors had crossed into territorial waters “is simply not true.”
“I want to get (the situation) resolved in as easy and diplomatic a way as possible,” Blair said, adding that he hoped that the Iranians “understood how fundamental an issue this is for the British government.”
On a visit to the Middle East, Rice 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.
He 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 it was 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.
Iran’s top military official, Gen. Ali Reza Afshar, said Saturday that 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.
British, Israeli and Saudi media reports 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 six weeks ago. Several months earlier, six Iranian officials were captured by U.S. forces in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish self-ruled region of Iraq. One was later released.
