Iran arrests British embassy employees

IRANIAN authorities have detained several local employees of the British embassy in Tehran, a move that Britain’s foreign secretary yesterday called “harassment and intimidation” and reflected a hardening of the regime’s stance toward the West. The European Union condemned the arrests.

Iranian media said eight local embassy staff were detained for an alleged role in post-election protests. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said “about nine” employees were detained on Saturday and that four had been released.

EU foreign ministers meeting in Corfu, Greece, issued a statement yesterday condemning the arrests and calling for the immediate release of all those still detained. The bloc also denounced Iran’s continuing restrictions on journalists.

The EU also wants to restart talks on Iran’s nuclear programme, the bloc’s top foreign policy official said yesterday, even as its foreign ministers condemned Iran for its crackdown on demonstrators and rights groups.

“We would like very much that soon we will have the possibility to restart multilateral talks with Iran on the important nuclear issues,” EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said.

Witnesses said riot police clashed with up to 3,000 protesters near a mosque in north Tehran yesterday, using tear gas and truncheons to break up Iran’s first post-election demonstration in five days.

Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi has alleged massive fraud in the June 12 presidential election and says he is the rightful winner, not President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Iran has accused the West of stoking unrest, singling out Britain and the US for alleged meddling and for expressing concern about the ferocity of the regime’s crackdown on protesters.

Yesterday, the semi-official Fars news agency reported that the embassy staffers were detained for what was described as a “significant role” in post-election unrest.

The British Foreign Office says the embassy has a staff of more than 100, including at least 70 locally hired Iranians. Last week, Britain sent home 12 dependents of embassy staff because the protests had disrupted their lives.

Miliband, in Corfu for the EU meeting, said Britain lodged a protest with the Iranian authorities over the detentions, which he described as “harassment and intimidation of a kind that is quite unacceptable”.