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Iran seizes 15 British personnel

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 24, 2007

LONDON - Fifteen British naval personnel carrying out an inspection in the Persian Gulf were seized by Iranian forces on Friday morning, the British government said.

The episode quickly added to tensions between the West and Iran over its nuclear program and its possible role in aiding insurgents in Iraq.

The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, told reporters that she was "extremely disturbed" and had demanded an explanation from the Iranian ambassador to Britain.

The subsequent meeting between the ambassador, Rasoul Movahedian, and Permanent Under Secretary Sir Peter Ricketts of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was "brisk but polite," a spokeswoman said.

"Sir Peter Ricketts demanded the safe return of our personnel and equipment, and emphasized the incident happened in Iraqi territorial waters," the spokeswoman said.

In a statement, the Defense Ministry said the group - eight sailors and seven marines - had been conducting "routine boarding operations of merchant shipping in Iraqi territorial waters." They had just finished inspecting a merchant vessel for evidence of smuggling "when they and their two boats were surrounded and escorted by Iranian vessels into Iranian territorial waters," the ministry said.

A spokeswoman said the capture was believed to have been carried out by "Iranian sailors belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy."

In Tehran, state television quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry official as saying that the Britons were guilty of "blatant aggression into Iranian territorial waters."

"This is not the first time that British military personnel during the occupation of Iraq have entered illegally into Iran's territorial waters," the state TV quoted the official as saying, according to the Press Association, the British news agency.

Even before this latest event, relations between Iran and the West were particularly fraught. Iran has refused to end its nuclear program - which Western powers fear it could use to develop nuclear weapons - and has been accused of helping to finance and equip Shiite militias in Iraq.

The Britons were based on the frigate Cornwall, part of a multinational force that patrols in the northern Persian Gulf, just below the mouth of the disputed Shatt al Arab, a waterway between Iran and Iraq.

Commodore Nick Lambert, commander of the Royal Navy task force, told reporters that contact with the sailors was lost after they had searched the merchant vessel, but that personnel in a British helicopter overhead had seen the seizures.

"We know our helicopter reported that they saw the boats being moved up the Shatt al Arab waterway towards an Iranian base up there, and we know that there was no fighting, there was no engagement, no weapons or anything like that," Lambert said.

In an interview with the BBC, Lambert said that he hoped the episode was the result of a "simple misunderstanding," and that he had no doubt that the British forces, on two rigid inflatable boats, were in Iraqi territorial waters.

[Last modified March 24, 2007, 02:00:27]