Iran: British soldiers will not be swapped

Iran is not aiming to swap the 15 British sailors it detained for the five Iranians arrested in northern Iraq, the deputy foreign minister was quoted as saying on state television today.

In comments read out by a newscaster, Deputy Foreign Minister Mehzi Mostafavi did not say what Iran plans to do with the British sailors, but he said they were being interrogated.

“It should become clear whether their entry (into Iran) was intentional or unintentional. After that is clarified, the necessary decision will be made,” Mostafavi said.

He rejected British claims that the sailors were in Iraqi waters when the Iranian navy seized them on Friday.

“Iran has enough evidence to prove that the British Forces personnel were detained in Iranian waters,” he said. He added that the British government was accountable for their actions.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Iran yesterday that he regarded the seizure of the 15 sailors as “very serious”.

“It is simply is not true that they went into Iranian territorial waters,” Blair told reporters while on a visit to Berlin.

Britain, supported by the European Union and the United States, says the sailors, who include a woman, were seized at gunpoint after they had searched a civilian vessel in the Iraqi part of the Shatt al Arab waterway.

Iran has long contested the international frontier in the Shatt al Arab and says the sailors had trespassed in a “blatant aggression”.

Reports in the British, Israeli and Saudi media yesterday suggested that Iran was hoping to trade the Britons for Iranian officials it claims have been abducted by the West in recent months.

US forces in Iraq are detaining five Iranian officials who were captured at an Iranian liaison office in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish self-ruled region of Iraq. The Iranians are suspected of helping to provide arms and money to insurgents.

In a news broadcast, state TV said: “Mostafi rejected claims that Iran intends to exchange British Force personnel with the kidnapped Iranian diplomats in Iraq.”

Britain and the EU have been pushing hard diplomatically for Iran to release the sailors, but their detention comes at a time of high tension between the West and Iran.

On Saturday, the UN Security Council imposed additional sanctions on Iran for its refusal to stop uranium enrichment, a process that produces the fuel for power stations or the material for atomic bombs.