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UK asks Iran to release boatmen
http://www.sina.com.cn 2004/06/23 11:04  Shanghai Daily

  Intense efforts made to defuse looming crisisTHE British government summoned the Iranian ambassador yesterday, demanding the release of eight Royal Navy crewmen detained in Iran.

  The Foreign Office said a senior British official in London had asked Morteza Sarmadi to explain why Iranian guards had arrested the sailors, while they conducted a "routine mission" in the Shatt-al-Arab waterway.

  Earlier, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw phoned his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharrazi to ask that the men be released.

  "The ambassador was asked to explain why the eight are being held, for their release as soon as possible and for full consular access to them meanwhile," the Foreign Office said.

  Iran said the sailors will be prosecuted.

  A British official said Sarmadi had offered no immediate clarification. "It was a one way conversation, an opportunity for us to put our concerns across and for him to listen," he said, on condition of anonymity.

  British officials are working to prevent Monday's arrest escalating into a diplomatic crisis. Richard Dalton, the British ambassador in Teheran, is trying to resolve the situation with the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  Earlier yesterday, Iran's main state-run television channel showed the sailors sitting silently on chairs and a sofa. Three of them were in British military uniform; five others wore military trousers and civilian T-shirts. Later, Iran's state-run Arabic language Al-Alam television showed them blindfolded and sitting on the ground.

  "They will be prosecuted for illegally entering Iranian territorial waters," the Arabic language Al-Alam television reported. The station is part of the state-run Iranian radio and television network. "The vessels were 1,000 meters inside Iranian territorial waters. The crew have also confessed to having entered Iranian waters," the broadcast said.

  The eight were detained in the waterway on Monday as they were delivering a patrol boat for the new Iraqi Riverine Patrol Service.

  The waterway runs along the border between Iran and Iraq and has long been a source of tension between the neighbors.

  British-Iranian relations have run warm and cold for years.

  Ties were strained in 1989 when the founder of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, against British author Salman Rushdie.

  In 1998, the Iranian government declared it would not support the fatwa and the two countries exchanged ambassadors in 1999.

  In 2002, Iran rejected a British candidate for ambassador. A year later, shots were fired at the British embassy in Teheran, after Britain briefly held an Iranian diplomat accused of helping to mastermind the car bombing of a Jewish center in Argentina.

  Britain has pursued a policy of constructive engagement with the clerical regime and last year, with France and Germany, persuaded Teheran to cooperate with nuclear inspectors.

  But relations are again strained, after London helped draft a resolution at last week's meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, rebuking Iran for failing to meet its commitments.

  (The Associated Press)




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