Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

U.N. Security Council concerned for Britons

The standoff between Britain and Iran over 15 captured sailors and marines further hardens.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published March 30, 2007

UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. Security Council expressed "grave concern" Thursday over Iran's seizure of 15 British sailors and marines and called for an early resolution of the escalating dispute, but Iran's chief international negotiator suggested the captives might be put on trial.

As the standoff drove world oil prices to new six-month highs, Turkey, NATO's only Muslim member, reportedly sought to calm tensions by urging Iran to let a Turkish diplomat meet with the detainees and to free the lone woman among the Britons. Iran was reportedly considering the offer.

Tensions had seemed to be cooling a day earlier, but after Iran angered British leaders by airing a video of the prisoners and Britain touched a nerve in Tehran by seeking U.N. help, positions hardened even more Thursday.

Iran retreated from a pledge by Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki that the female sailor, 26-year-old Faye Turney, would be released soon. Mottaki then repeated that the matter could be resolved if Britain admitted its sailors mistakenly entered Iranian territorial waters on Friday.

Britain's Foreign Office insisted again that the sailors and marines were seized in an Iraqi-controlled area while searching merchant ships under a U.N. mandate and said no admission of error would be made.

With Britain taking its case to the United Nations, Ali Larijani, the top Iranian negotiator in all his country's foreign dealings, went on Iranian state radio to issue a warning.

He said that if Britain continued its current approach, "this case may face a legal path" - a clear reference to Iran prosecuting the sailors and marines in court. "British leaders have miscalculated this issue," he said.

Gen. Ali Reza Afshar, Iran's military chief, blamed the backtracking on releasing the British woman on "wrong behavior" by her government. "The release of a female British soldier has been suspended," the semiofficial Iranian news agency Mehr said.

State television also broadcast a video it said showed the operation that seized the British sailors and marines. In the clip, a helicopter hovers above inflatable boats in choppy seas, then the Royal Navy crews are seen seated in an Iranian vessel.

The video came a day after Iran broadcast a longer video showing the Britons in captivity. That video included a segment showing Turney saying her team had "trespassed" in Iranian waters.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett condemned Iran's use of Turney for what she called "propaganda purposes," calling it "outrageous and cruel."

The Iranians released a letter Wednesday purportedly written by Turney to her family saying the British sailors were in Iranian waters. And the video aired Thursday showed another letter supposedly by Turney to Britain's Parliament calling for British troops to leave Iraq.

"I ask the representatives of the House of Commons, after the government promised that this kind of incident wouldn't happen again, why did they let this occur, and why has the government not been questioned over this," the letter read. "Isn't it time to start withdrawing our forces from Iraq and let them determine their own future?"

Some experts raised questions about that letter, saying its wording hinted it was first composed in Farsi and then translated into English.

"It's obviously been dictated to her," said Nadim Shehadi, an expert on Iran at the Chatham House think tank in London. "There's no way she would phrase it like that."

Beckett said there were "grave concerns about the circumstances in which it was prepared and issued."

"This blatant attempt to use Leading Seaman Turney for propaganda purposes is outrageous and cruel," Beckett said.

Where's border of Iran and Iraq?

The question of where the river border between Iran and Iraq actually runs is as murky as the brown waters of the Shatt al-Arab.

The flow: The waterway is formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. From there, the Shatt al-Arab, which the Iranians call the Arvand River, meanders south between Iran and Iraq until it spills into the northern Persian Gulf.

Grudges: A 1937 treaty gave Iraq full rights to most of the Shatt al-Arab. Iran scrapped the border pact in 1969. Four years later, Algeria mediated another deal setting the border in the middle of the river's most navigable channel. Saddam Hussein tore up that treaty in 1980 and invaded Iran.

Shifting channels: Although the Iraq-Iran war ended without a formal peace treaty, both Iraq and Iran have generally accepted that the border runs down the middle of the main channel. But the channel shifts due to silting. Because the two countries have not agreed on updated charts, that means there is no universal agreement on exactly where the border line runs.

[Last modified March 30, 2007, 01:33:22]