Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

British crew gets teary welcome

With the marines and sailors in the clear, Britain and the United States ramp up the rhetoric.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published April 6, 2007

ROYAL MARINE BASE CHIVENOR, England - With champagne bottles popping, a Royal Navy crew flew home Thursday after nearly two weeks in Iranian captivity to hugs from tearful relatives and relief in a Britain outraged the crew was used by Tehran for propaganda.

Prime Minister Tony Blair was more somber. He said that while the country celebrated the safe return - and praised the diplomacy that secured their release - the joy was diminished by the killing of four British soldiers in Iraq on Thursday.

"Just as we rejoice at the return of our 15 service personnel, so today we are also grieving and mourning for the loss of our soldiers in Basra, who were killed as the result of a terrorist act," Blair said outside his office.

The freed crew left Iran in the morning, traveling in business class to London's Heathrow Airport on a British Airways jetliner. Then two Sea King helicopters ferried the crew 210 miles to the Royal Marine base at Chivenor for a reunion with families.

The crew was expected to remain at the base at least until today for debriefing about their seizure by Iran, which charged the naval team intruded into its waters in two inflatable boats. Britain says the crew was searching for smuggling on Iraq's side of the Shatt al-Arab, a disputed waterway dividing Iraq and Iran.

Britain's Sky News reported that an officer in the captured crew, Royal Marine Capt. Chris Air, had said three weeks ago that the team gathered intelligence on Iran during its patrols. The Defense Ministry denied the crew had any special intelligence role.

Videotape and letters of the crew apologizing for entering Iranian waters were widely publicized, and some British newspapers reacted with dismay.

But Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the chief of the defense staff, dismissed questions about the crew's conduct. "They did exactly as they should have done from start to finish and we are proud of them," he said.

Fast Facts:

The latest

White House talks tough: With the British sailors and marines soldiers back on British soil, the White House and the State Department turned up criticism of Iran that had been deliberately toned down during the incident. At the State Department, spokesman Sean McCormack said the incident was part of an Iranian pattern of taking hostages dating back to the seizure of 52 Americans in 1979 and including a 2004 incident in which Iran captured and held another group of British sailors. "This is clearly a regime that, after several decades, continues to view hostage-taking as a tool of its international diplomacy," he said.

Nuclear issues back on table: Iran and the major powers seeking to halt its nuclear program resumed discussions almost immediately after Iran announced that it was releasing a British navy crew, an EU official said in Brussels on Thursday. Talks on the nuclear issue were put on hold during the standoff. But hours after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced the crew's release, top Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani spoke with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who negotiates on behalf of permanent U.N. Security Council members.

[Last modified April 6, 2007, 01:20:20]