Blair warns Iran to release sailors
The sailors’ capture and new UN sanctions imposed on Tehran on Saturday over its disputed nuclear programme have stoked tensions between the West and Iran and pushed oil prices to a 2007 high.
Russia and the United Arab Emirates yesterday urged Iran to comply with UN demands that it halt sensitive nuclear work but Tehran says the UN resolution is illegal.
Iran, which denies any intention of making atomic weapons, has said it may charge the two boatloads of British sailors and marines with illegally entering its waters in the northern Gulf. Britain insists they were operating in Iraqi waters.
“What we are trying to do ... is to pursue this through the diplomatic channels and make the Iranian government understand these people have to be released and that there is absolutely no justification whatever for holding them,” Mr Blair said. “They have to release them. If not, then this will move into a different phase,” he said.
His spokesman said the next step London could take would be to publish proof, in the form of global satellite positioning records, that the sailors had not entered Iranian waters.
“We so far haven’t made explicit why we know that because we don’t want to escalate this,” he said.
British officials had shown Iran data on the sailors’ exact position when seized, a government source said.
Britain has been assured that the sailors are well but has not been given access to them. British embassy staff will be allowed to see the sailors only once the preliminary investigation has been completed, an Iranian government spokesman told IRNA state news agency.
British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett telephoned her Iranian counterpart to demand the sailors’ release and spoke “in very robust terms” to “again demand their safe and speedy return”.
Iraq’s government and an Iraqi fisherman who witnessed the capture say it took place in Iraqi waters.
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