Iran seizes three British naval boats near Iraq border

"This morning, three British boats with eight people on board entered Iranian territorial waters. The Iranian navy, in accordance with their duties, seized these boats and arrested the crew," spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in a statement.

"Currently they are being interrogated and an investigation is underway," he added. Official sources said the small patrol boats were armed with heavy machine-guns, and identified the detained Britons as "Royal Navy commandos".

A British military spokesman in Iraq said: "We can confirm three small Royal Navy patrol boats and eight crew have been out of communication since the early hours of this morning.

"Their last known indication was to be in the Shatt al-Arab area which is not unusual. There are no further details at present."

River patrol service

Iranian state television's Arabic-language channel, Al-Alam, said Iranian forces had also seized GPS devices, assault rifles, pistols, cameras and detailed maps of the Iran-Iraq border area.

The British soldiers were detained shortly before midday and had "confessed that they had made a mistake", Al-Alam said, adding it would show television footage of the British detainees later the same day.

Playing it down as a "low-level incident", a Royal Navy spokesman at the defence ministry in London said the three small boats appeared to have "strayed into Iranian territory".

"These boats are used for training Iraqi river patrol service... what we would call river police," said the spokesman, who was unable to specify if any Iraqis were on board.

"The waterway runs over a mile (1.6 kilometres) wide. The border runs pretty much down the middle of it... Maybe, it was disputed whose side" of the border the vessels were on, he said.

Sensitive area

British armed forces control a large area of southern Iraq around the city of Basra, and along with Iraqi security forces patrol parts of the Shatt al-Arab, mostly to combat smugglers and anti-occupation forces seeking to enter Iraq.

Contacts with Iranian troops along that border area have generally been described by British sources as "cordial", and Monday's incident is the most serious in the sensitive area since last year's US-led invasion of Iraq.

The Shatt al-Arab border demarcation was a constant source of dispute - and of conflict during the 1980-1988 war between Iran and Iraq - under Saddam Hussein, until a deal was struck for the frontier to run at the mid-way point.

The British embassy in Tehran said it was in touch with Iranian officials.

Ties between Britain and Iran have been strained in recent months, with the embassy in Tehran being targeted by a string of angry demonstrations sparked by an Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal as well as the entry of occupation troops into Iraqi holy Shia cities.

Britain was also the co-sponsor of a resolution passed by the International Atomic Energy Agency last Friday that heavily criticised Iran for failing to fully cooperate with an investigation into its nuclear programme.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/161E2F3B-CFC6-4559-986F-3195691A47BF.htm

Iran says it has seized three British navy vessels inside its territorial waters near the Iraqi border.
Eight British sailors on board were arrested when the vessels were seized on the Shatt al-Arab river, the foreign ministry in Tehran said.

A spokesman for Iran's Revolutionary Guards said the vessels had entered Iranian waters without permission.

The Ministry of Defence in London confirmed that it had lost contact with three small patrol boats in the area.

A source at the ministry said the three boats were being delivered to the Iraqis by the Royal Naval Training team.

At UK military headquarters in Basra, Capt Donald Francis said: "Three small Royal Navy patrol boats and eight crew have been out of communication since the early hours of this morning.

"Their last known location was in the vicinity of the Shatt al-Arab waterway."

Confiscated

A spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, Hamid Reza Asefi, said the three vessels had entered Iranian waters on Monday morning.

"Iran's naval forces, acting on their legal duty, confiscated the vessels and arrested the crew," he added.

An Iranian military spokesman said the boats were being escorted to shore, where an investigation would be conducted.

He indicated they could be freed soon if the inquiry showed there had been no malicious intent.

He said the Revolutionary Guards were now waiting for the Iranian foreign ministry to take up the case.

Tense relations

Iranian naval sources quoted by Iran's official Arab-language al-Alam satellite TV news station said weapons and maps were found on board the vessels.

A spokesman for the UK foreign ministry in London said three small patrol boats were known to be operating in the area on a training patrol with the Iraqi coastal defence force.

The spokesman said British diplomats had been in touch with the Iranian authorities over the incident, both in London and Tehran.

However, they had not yet received official confirmation from the Iranians of the identity of those arrested.

The BBC's Jim Muir in Tehran says relations between Britain and Iran are always delicate and are currently somewhat tense over Iraq, human rights, Iran's nuclear programme and other issues.

But our correspondent adds that incidents of this kind would normally be expected to be resolved in isolation from political complications.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3826179.stm