<font color=brown> I am curious as to what others think Iran is doing. Obviously, they want to piss off the coalition and present a distraction.....but do you think there's more to it? <font color=black>
*****************************************************
Tensions rise as Iran weighs sailors' release
Lizette Alvarez NYT Wednesday, June 23, 2004
Britain demands access to detainees
LONDON Triggering a diplomatic tussle with Britain, Iran said Tuesday that it was still deciding whether to release eight detained British sailors, but it indicated the men could be freed shortly.
.
Earlier in the day, Al Alam, an Arabic-language state-run satellite channel, reported that Iran planned to prosecute the eight men for illegally entering its territorial waters.
.
The channel also aired film of the sailors sitting on the ground, blindfolded.
.
"If the result of the interrogations of those British military men shows that they didn't have any bad intention, they will be released soon," Ali Reza Afshar, deputy head of the armed forces chief of staff, told the Iranian student news agency ISNA.
.
A separate report from the agency, which cited "unofficial sources," said Iran's Revolutionary Guard had been told to free the men and that they would be let go "in the coming hours or tomorrow morning."
.
Furious over Iran's handling of the matter, the British Foreign Office summoned Iran's ambassador in London on Tuesday morning to demand access to the detainees and answers about what was happening to them.
.
Foreign Minister Jack Straw also telephoned his Iranian counterpart, Kamal Kharrazi, to inquire about the situation. Kharrazi told Straw he would personally look into the matter, said Ian Gleason, a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair.
.
"We are trying to resolve this issue as quickly as possible," Gleason said.
.
Despite a constant stream of news reports in Iran, Britain said it was being told next to nothing about why the men had been arrested, where they were being held and what was likely to happen to them. Iranian officials said the men were still being interrogated and had already admitted that they "deliberately" entered Iranian territorial waters without permission, Al Alam reported.
.
Iranian guards stopped the eight Royal Navy and Royal Marine sailors on the Shatt-al-Arab waterway on Monday and seized their three small boats, accusing the sailors of illegally entering Iranian territory. The Shatt-al-Arab is a narrow stretch of water that separates Iraq from Iran's southern border.
.
British government and military officials said the sailors were on a training run and were delivering the boats to Iraq to bolster its river patrol service. It is possible they could have strayed into Iranian waters on a windy day, military officials said.
.
British and Iraqi troops regularly patrol the river, which serves as a popular route for smugglers and militants seeking to enter Iraq. Al Alam has reported that machine guns, night-vision goggles, sophisticated maps and other equipment were found on the boats, indicating that the crewmen were not "regular sailors," it said. "Their mission is still unclear," it added.
.
But British officials said the boats were unarmed and that the sailors carried only their personal weapons.
.
The spat comes at a prickly time for Iran and Britain. Last week, Britain, along with France and Germany, pushed through a resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency sharply criticizing Iran for failing to cooperate with nuclear inspectors. And last month, Iranians held large demonstrations outside the British Embassy in Tehran over the Iraq prison scandal and assaults by coalition troops on Shiite shrines in Iraq. The demonstrators pelted the embassy buildings with rocks and demanded the expulsion of the British ambassador, Richard Dalton.
.
Zhand Shakibi, a political science professor at the London School of Economics who specializes in the Middle East, said Iran could also be sending a message about border control. It has been reported and quietly repeated in Iran that the U.S. military is sending spies and militants into the country to stir up ethnic tensions, he said. "It could be signaling two things," Shakibi said. "We are disappointed that London has supported the criticism of us on the nuclear issue. And it could be a message saying: Stay away from the borders. We know what you've been up to."
.
One complicating factor for Britain is that the sailors are being held by the Revolutionary Guard, which is trying to reassert its authority in Iran after parliamentary elections, he said.
.
"The Revolutionary Guard is making a comeback, and they could be sending a message inside Iran, as well, that they need to be taken seriously."
.
iht.com |
