We can publish your stories, Iran tells British sailors

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran is ready to "support" the 15 British sailors it captured to publish their stories after London reversed a decision allowing them to receive payments for their accounts, a top presidential advisor said.

"Once we get assurances that the young British naval personnel will not get into trouble with their government and their military, then Iran is prepared to support them in writing and publishing their memoirs," Ali Akbar Javanfekr was quoted as saying by state media.

We will "provide them with photos as well as cassette tapes and video cassettes on their cheerful life during their time in Iran," said Javanfekr, the top media advisor to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

On March 23, 15 British navy and marines were detained by Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards on an accusation of crossing into Iranian territorial waters.

Ahmadinejad subsequently pardoned and released them as a "gift" for the British people. While in Iran, the sailors said they were looked after well but made allegations of maltreatment on their return.

Britain's Defence Secretary Des Browne was then forced to apologise in parliament for a decision to allow sailors to sell their stories which was rapidly replaced by a wholesale ban.

Faye Turney, the only female detainee, reportedly received around 100,000 pounds (147,000 euros, 196,000 dollars) for interviews with The Sun tabloid, and commercial broadcaster ITV.

The youngest detainee, Operator Maintainer Arthur Batchelor, sold his story to the Daily Mirror and caused embarrassment in military ranks by complaining the Iranians never returned his MP3 player.

GB IHT Cartoon

British Marine held in Iran admits the Sailors were Spying

MoD criticised for allowing sailors to sell their stories

By Jason Bennetto

09 April 2007

The Ministry of Defence has been forced to defend its controversial decision to allow the 15 sailors and marines held captive in Iran to cash in on their ordeal and sell their stories.

Families of servicemen who have died in Iraq, and former military chiefs, have criticised the MoD's move to allow the Navy personnel to gain tens of thousands of pounds from media interviews and exclusives.

Among those who stand to benefit from the deal is Leading Seaman Faye Turney - the only woman to be captured - whose story has attracted intense media interest. An unconfirmed report said she had already agreed a deal worth more than £100,000 with ITV1's Tonight with Trevor McDonald and The Sun newspaper.

But one of the former captives, Lt Felix Carman, said any fee he was paid would go to charity. "I am not interested in making money out of this," the 26-year-old from Swansea told the BBC. "My main aim is to tell the story. There's some people who might be making money, but that's an individual's decision, that's very private, but that's not something that myself or many of the others will do."

The MoD yesterday justified its decision by arguing that the move would allow officials to have some control or "sight" over the interviews. It said the decision to sanction media interviews had been taken because of the "exceptional circumstances" surrounding the group's ordeal.

The sailors and Royal Marines were held after Iran accused them of entering its waters, a claim they denied. The personnel later said that they were blindfolded, bound and held in isolation during their 13 days of captivity. In principle, serving personnel are not allowed to enter into financial arrangements with media organisations.

The decision has caused a backlash. Mike Aston, whose 30-year-old son Cpl Russell Aston was one of six military policemen killed by a mob in Majar al-Kabir, Iraq, in June 2003, said he was "absolutely amazed" by the deal.

"Let's put it this way, regarding my son's death - and it was a very high profile case - I can put my hand on my heart and say that I've never sought or made a penny out of it in any way, shape or form. I think to sell my story would besmirch my son's memory."

Rose Gentle, whose son Fusilier Gordon Gentle, 19, was killed in Basra in June 2004, added: "This is wrong and I don't think it should be allowed."

Col Bob Stewart, former first British UN Commander in Bosnia, said that the idea made him "sick".

He added: "They [The Ministry of Defence] would say it's a pragmatic decision because actually those stories are going to come out - I understand that, it's just it makes me a bit sick."

"People who have lost loved ones might say, 'We have just had huge losses which can't be replaced by money and we've never profited out of it, and these people lived and many died and they were relatively safe in Iraq whereas many people in Iraq are not safe'."

Opposition politicians have been strongly critical of the move, with the Conservatives saying a bidding war would be inappropriate and undignified and the Liberal Democrats warning the strategy could backfire.

Max Clifford, the leading PR agent, said that he had been approached by the fathers of two of the 15 freed service personnel and had advised them to give the money to families of those who had been killed in Iraq in order to defuse a "backlash". Estimating that offers for the stories could total at least £250,000, Mr Clifford said that he believed at least three of the personnel had received approaches.

In response to the criticism, a statement from the Ministry of Defence said: "It was clear that the stories they had to tell were likely to have emerged via family and friends regardless of any decision the Navy took. "It was therefore decided to grant permission to speak to the media to those personnel that sought it, in order to ensure that the Navy and the MoD had sight of what they were going to say as well as providing proper media support to the sailors and marines in the same way as would have been the case in more ordinary circumstances."

The department added: "It is a fact that the media have been making direct contact with the families and offering them significant sums of money - this is not something that the Navy and the MoD have any control over."

Wages of war £100,000

The amount Faye Turney is expected to receive for her story from ITV1's Tonight with Trevor McDonald and The Sun newspaper

Storm in UK as freed sailors sell stories to media

By Adrian Croft

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Defence Ministry came under fire on Sunday for allowing 15 sailors and marines held by Iran for 13 days to sell their stories to the media.

The ministry said it had waived rules barring serving military personnel from selling their stories because of huge public interest in the case. "These are considered to be exceptional circumstances," a ministry spokeswoman said.

Some popular British newspapers pay people for their sensational stories to boost sales. The spokeswoman said the 15 would be able to keep fees which press reports estimated could total as much as 250,000 pounds ($493,500).

The 15 were freed last Thursday after being seized by Iranian forces in the Shatt al-Arab waterway between
Iraq and Iran. Iran said they were detained for entering its waters illegally. Britain said they were in Iraqi waters.

Several of the sailors and marines, particularly the only woman among them, Faye Turney, became well known after they were shown repeatedly on Iranian television during the standoff.

On their return to Britain, the sailors and marines said they were blindfolded, bound, kept in isolation and told they faced up to seven years in jail.

William Hague, foreign affairs spokesman of the opposition Conservative Party, said the decision to let the 15 sell their stories set an important precedent and the Conservatives would raise questions about it when parliament re-opened on April 16.

He said the armed forces would gradually lose dignity and respect if military personnel were allowed to sell their stories whenever they had been in a difficult situation.

ACTS OF HEROISM

"There are incredible acts of heroism ... on a weekly, daily basis sometimes in operations in
Afghanistan and Iraq but they are not written about," Hague told Sky News.

Hague said the Conservatives would also ask the government to make a statement on the circumstances surrounding the capture of the 15 and what would be done to stop it happening again.

Menzies Campbell, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrats, predicted a public backlash against the decision to let the 15 sell their stories because in the same week they came home safely, six more British soldiers were killed in Iraq.

Colonel Bob Stewart, former commander of British peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, told the BBC the decision to let them publish was unprecedented and called the capture "hardly one of the most glorious annals of royal naval history."

Max Clifford, Britain's best-known celebrity agent, said letting the sailors and marines tell their story was "purely a propaganda exercise."

"The Ministry of Defence are very keen for them to do it ... The public are more likely to believe them than they are the Ministry of Defence or the politicians," he told the BBC.

London and Tehran are at loggerheads over Iran's nuclear program and British Prime Minister
Tony Blair has accused "elements of the Iranian regime" of financing, arming and supporting terrorism in Iraq.

Defending itself in the face of the outcry, the Ministry of Defence said on Sunday it had granted permission to ensure the navy and the ministry "had sight" of what the former detainees were going to say.

sky news

Exclusive: The Interview You Didn't See

The captain in charge of the 15 marines detained in Iran has said they WERE gathering intelligence on the Iranians. Watch what Captain Chris Air told Sky news while on patrol three weeks ago.(2mins)

click here to watch video in windwos media player

The true face of Iran (Tehran Times)

By our staff writer
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s surprise announcement on Wednesday that the British military personnel detained for entering Iranian waters were to be freed was met by a round of applause by correspondents attending the press conference. The move was another example of the civilized attitude of the Iranian people, which is acknowledged by friends and foes alike and has its roots in ancient Iran. The president called the decision to free the sailors and marines “a gift from the Iranian people to the British people.”

Iranian armed forces arrested the 15 British marines and sailors on March 23 after they illegally entered Iran’s territorial waters in the northern Persian Gulf.

The release of the British sailors through quiet diplomacy provides a "compelling lesson on how to deal with the wider international standoff between the U.S. and Iran," according to Professor Abbas Edalat.

The professor at London's prestigious Imperial College said the unexpectedly early resolution following their arrest in the Persian Gulf was the "direct result of Iran's goodwill and a U-turn by the British government."

"After initially using language of threat and seeking to add an unnecessary international dimension to the dispute, it eventually opted for direct negotiations with Iran based on mutual respect," he said in an article for the Guardian newspaper on Friday.

Ahmadinejad’s brief conversation with the sailors and marines was a demonstration of his “doctrine of kindness toward all human beings” in action.

But after they got home, perhaps due to pressure, the British troops were ungrateful, despite the fact that they were treated well in Iran and eventually freed.

The president also asked the Tony Blair government to refrain from punishing the troops for admitting they illegally entered Iran’s waters in the Persian Gulf.

As a result of this move, which won international praise, the ill-intentioned efforts of certain biased Western officials and media outlets to demonize the Iranian president came to naught.

Yet, these Western officials and media outlets have refused to give Iran credit for the humanitarian act and even launched a totally absurd propaganda campaign against the Islamic Republic after four British soldiers were killed in southern Iraq, with some officials saying Iran put psychological pressure on the detained troops and Prime Minister Tony Blair, instead of thanking Iran, again repeating his claim that Iran is supporting elements that are attacking U.S.-UK coalition forces in Iraq.

Unfortunately, the true face of Iran is still being hidden from the world, with media outlets disseminating biased and unrealistic stories about Iran, distorting Tehran’s call for a lasting peace with justice to resolve the decades-long Middle East conflict and insisting that it is unyielding in its demand that its inalienable nuclear rights be recognized.

But one day the world will see the true image of Iran.

Iran sends a message

Pat Buchanan
Saturday, April 7, 2007

WASHINGTON

The Easter pardon by Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the 15 British sailors and marines, seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in waters off the Iraqi coast two weeks ago, ends the crisis.

And as the beaming smile of President Ahmadinejad while he graciously accepted apologies from the sailors and marines testifies, there is no doubt as to who won the showdown. Among Iranians, for whom love of the Brits is an acquired taste, Ahmadinejad is the victor. His position inside Iran, a subject of speculation, is surely stronger today.

But his victory and that of the Revolutionary Guards comes at a cost to Iran, which showed itself to be a state willing to engage in hostage-taking and show trials as a negotiating tactic.

As for the British military, however, it has sustained a humiliation.

What kind of rules of engagement were these sailors operating under to permit themselves to be surrounded, captured and disarmed without firing a shot? What kind of training did they have? How was it that, in days, if not hours, some were parroting the story line fed them by their captors -- that they regretted having violated Iranian territory and wished to express remorse? As yet, there is no evidence any were abused or tortured.

The episode reveals the decline of once-Great Britain.

What could today's Britain have done? Unlike the Falklands War of 25 years ago, the Royal Navy is not what it was, and Tony Blair is not Margaret Thatcher. The Brits may have the nuclear weapons to destroy Iran. In conventional power, they are like the rest of the European Union -- bantamweights, at best.

Among the risks Iran took was that the British would fight, not surrender. Blood could have been shed, casualties taken, and Britain might have retaliated, forcing Iran to fight.

Why, then, did the Iranians seize and hold the Brits, then suddenly let them go? One explanation is that they are sending a message.

While they do not want war with us, they do not fear it to such an extent that they will permit themselves to be pushed around. You hit us, we hit back. But if you engage us diplomatically, rather than disrespect and threaten us, progress is possible in getting what your want. That, at least, is what the Iranian behavior seems to suggest.

The United States should test again, via back channels, whether Iran is willing to suspend enrichment of uranium in return for a U.S. suspension of sanctions. For time is not on our side. Iran's ability to enrich uranium to weapons grade, however limited today, improves every month. It does not diminish.

In recent months, U.S. forces have, on two occasions, seized Iranians inside Iraq. Iraqis close to the U.S. military bagged another. He was released the day before the Brits were let go. Now, the U.S. military has permitted Red Cross visits to five Iranians seized in Irbil.

There have been reports of insurgent attacks on Iranians inside Iran, in the Kurdish region in the northwest, the Arab region of the southwest and in Baluchistan, near the Afghan-Pakistan border.

So far, neither the Iranians nor Americans have crossed a red line that would make inevitable the war some in both countries may want, but the great majority in both countries do not want.

Nancy Pelosi might thus hurry home from Saudi Arabia, where she has been instructing the Wahhabis on women's rights, and reintroduce that House resolution declaring that, before President Bush can take his country to war against Iran, Congress must first authorize it

What’s behind Iran’s surprise release of the Brit sailors?

What’s behind Iran’s surprise release of the Brit sailors?
Iran felt world pressure.		46%
Nothing – Iran was being nice for once.		19%
Britain threatened them behind the scene.		35%
Total Votes for this Question: 870

Ahmadinejad's Announcement

Ahmadinejad's Announcement (click here for video)

Tehran Likely to Pay Long-Term Price

By Robin Wright

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 5, 2007; Page A12

British officials expected an angry rant when they heard that Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was going to give a news conference yesterday about the 15 British hostages detained two weeks ago in the Persian Gulf.

Instead, the Iranian leader pledged to release the 14 men and one woman -- ending a crisis that may lead Tehran to claim a short-term victory but also pay a long-term price, according to Iran experts and Western and Iranian officials.

The Iranian government believes it scored a number of points, the sources said. As the Islamic republic faces growing pressure at the United Nations over its nuclear program, Tehran signaled that diplomacy -- rather than confrontation -- can defuse problems with the international community in the end.

"They got what they wanted," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA and National Security Council Middle East specialist now at the Brookings Institution. "They sent a message: If you don't deal with us, if you think you can push us around, you're in for some nasty surprises. But if you deal with us, you can get a 'gift.' " Ahmadinejad described the release as a "gift" in honor of the prophet Muhammad's birthday and Easter.

Efforts to free the 15 British detainees swung from behind-the-scenes diplomacy during the first week to internationalization of the standoff during the second week, when Britain won a statement of concern from the U.N. Security Council. The turning point, according to Iranian and British sources, was the exchange of diplomatic notes at the end of last week that shifted the process back to quiet bilateral efforts.

"There was a lot of activity the last two days to bring the level of rhetoric down," said a senior Iranian official who requested anonymity. Britain's diplomatic note last Friday promised to respect Iranian territory, he said. "This shows that there is a useful and conducive way to deal with Iran and that it is not through threats," the official said. "If Britain had not taken this to the Security Council then this would have been resolved earlier."

Ahmadinejad, under pressure at home for failing to deliver on his utopian promises from the 2005 election, may also have won a domestic propaganda victory, standing up to the West at one of the country's most vulnerable times since the 1979 revolution. The standoff with Britain deflected attention from U.N. Resolution 1747, which imposed new sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program. It passed a day after the British naval team was abducted. And although Iran's Supreme National Security Council and supreme leader Ali Khamenei ultimately makes key foreign policy decisions, Iranian television showed Ahmadinejad being thanked by a British sailor.

"He has come out more popular with his own supporters at the moment," said Christopher Rundle, a retired British diplomat who served in Iran.

At a time when five members of its Revolutionary Guard Corps are being detained by the United States in Iraq, Iran's most elite military unit also proved that it can play the tit-for-tat game, experts say. The British were seized by the Guard's naval unit. "The Revolutionary Guards wanted to send a signal to the U.S. and U.K. that if you mess with us, we'll mess with you. We know where you're vulnerable," said Riedel, who believes there is a link between the two cases.

The U.S. military detained the five during a raid in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil on Jan. 11. Iran expected their release three days before the British were detained. Although U.S. and British officials deny any deal or quid pro quo for the 15 Brits, the United States allowed the Iranians to be visited for the first time by the International Committee of the Red Cross and is considering permitting Iran to have consular access to them, U.S. officials said.

Yet Iran is also likely to pay a long-term price for the hostage drama, again appearing to undertake rogue actions in violation of international law, experts and officials say. In the end, Iran recognized that the crisis was beginning to exact a cost, as it came under pressure even from allies and other Islamic countries, officials and experts say. Even Syria urged Iran to release the hostages, Syrian and U.S. sources said.

"They are so consumed with short-term issues -- how to undermine the West and how to gain leverage -- at the expense of long-term strategy. They have undermined themselves," said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "They're playing the immediate moves of checkers and not the long-term strategy of a chess game. In the long term, it undermines their ability to attract foreign investment and have good relations" with the outside world.

Tehran was also unable to rally significant public support for another long-term showdown like the 1979-1981 hostage ordeal involving 52 American diplomats, experts added. "There was no nationalist bounce out of this," said Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "All the usual people you'd expect to be frothing at the mouth simply weren't."

Who Got the British Sailors Released? (time.com)

Wednesday, Apr. 04, 2007

By CATHERINE MAYER/LONDON AND AZADEH MOAVENI/TEHRAN

The President of Iran was clearly relishing his role as beneficent liberator of the 15 British Marines and sailors detained by Iran for nearly two weeks. At a press conference today, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the release a "gift to the British people" on the occasion of Easter as well as a commemoration of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday. The smiling President then met with the British detainees, nodding his head munificently as they lined up to offer thanks for their release. "It is for Islam," he reminded one. He joked to another: "You ended up on a compulsory visit, didn't you?"

As much as today's events appeared to be another episode of the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad show, the Iranian president's actual role in ending the crisis may have been less than meets the eye. The office of the presidency in Iran does not really have a say in matters of foreign policy. Indeed, British analysts were quick to credit another political personage for the resolution of the drama. John Williams, the former Director of News of Britain's Foreign Office, asserts that Dr. Ali Larijani, the secretary general of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, was more important in calling the shots. "It seems that around the weekend, Dr. Larijani decided to settle this and took control," says Williams. "He has proved himself a significant power broker, a man who, if he feels it is in Iran's best interests, will do business with the international community." Other observers warn against giving Larijani too much credit. Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, they say, may have decided that Iran had squeezed as much advantage out of the situation as possible and simply got Larijani to do the legwork to end the crisis.

British navy personnel, seized by Iran, wave to the media

after their meeting with the Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, at the presidential palace in Tehran, Iran,
Wednesday, April 4, 2007.

Observers in Britain don't doubt that the release of the detainees was in Iran's best interest. "If the saga had dragged on, it would have led to an escalation of international opinion against Iran," says Chris Rundle, a former British diplomat in Iran, noting that it took Iran 13 days to coordinate its policy. Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's former ambassador to the U.S., describes the decision as "a shrewd move. The detainees were a wasting asset." The sudden announcement also reinforced a sense that Iran, and not Britain, was dictating the pace.

Having Ahmadinejad deliver the breakthrough news may have been intended to buttress that image. He remains a symbol of Tehran's defiance of the West, and, for a politician of limited power, Ahmadinejad still knows how to play his role to maximum advantage. Nazenin Ansari, the diplomatic correspondent of the London-based Persian-language weekly Kayhan, believes he and Iran's hardliners have benefited from the showdown with Britain. "What we have seen is a shift to the right," she says. Reformists had been making progress, but "in Iran politics is all about changing the atmosphere. The current has now shifted in the same way it did during the 1979 hostage crisis."

In his press conference, Ahmadinejad said the captives would have been let go sooner but that the "British government behaved badly, and so it took a little while." When asked what prompted the sudden release, he said London had sent a letter promising that such incidents would not be repeated. While careful to point out that the British sailors were being released "as a gift, and not as a result of the letter," the president's reference to a British concession served as a face-saving device, rationalizing the sudden release after much clamor in Iran for a possible trial of the British service personnel.

The Iranian leadership — including Larijani, Ahmadinejad and certainly Khamenei — believes that Tehran's popularity among the world's Muslims, particularly for its face-off against America, gives it leverage in dealing with the West. "Iranians had bruised egos because of international pressure over their nuclear program and the detentions of their personnel by the U.S. in Iraq," says Ansari. "What we've seen is a public relations exercise to take command of the Arab street once again." Says Shahid Malik, one of the first Muslims elected to Britain's parliament: "This was yet another example of how adept Ahmadinejad is at communications in the way he targets the Muslim and non-Muslim world." During the press conference, Ahmadinejad made the expected jabs at the West, referring to the U.N. Security Council as "an organization they've created" and its resolutions as "pieces of paper they keep passing." He then accused Britain of involvement in a series of bombings in Iran's ethnic minority provinces in the past two years, while saying he would avoid going into detail lest the session "turn bitter."


Downing Street welcomed the move with public caution and mopped brows behind closed doors. As the crisis dragged on, government sources acknowledged that Iran's intransigence was exposing Britain's comparative impotence. It had failed to secure a strong denunciation of Iran's actions from the U.N. Security Council; its European allies were balancing support for Britain against their business interests; and although Prime Minister Tony Blair warned a failure to reach a quick resolution would lead to a "new phase" in response to the detentions, nobody detected in his words the martial sounds of rattling sabers. "There's no mood here for military adventures in Iran or elsewhere," says Malik. "Iraq wasn't what we thought it would be. There's a somber mood in this country."

Iran to free sailors as 'gift' to British people

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

CBC News

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he will free the 15 British sailors and marines detained in the Persian Gulf last month, ending a tense 13-day standoff between Tehran and London.

During a news conference Wednesday, Ahmadinejad made the surprising announcement that he had pardoned the crew.

"On the occasion of the birthday of the great Prophet (Muhammad) … and for the occasion of the passing of Christ, I say the Islamic Republic government and the Iranian people — with all powers and legal right to put the soldiers on trial — forgave those 15," he said, referring to the Muslim Prophet's birthday on March 30 and the Easter season."

"This pardon is a gift to the British people," he said, adding that the British crew will be taken to the Tehran airport.

Even though he had every right to put them on trial, the 15 would be forgiven and released as "a gift to the British people," Ahmadinejad said.

Prime Minister Tony Blair's office said it welcomed the news of their release.

Criticizes Britain for sending woman

At one point in his lengthy news conference, Ahmadinejad awarded a medal of honour to the commander of the Iranian coast guard who intercepted the sailors and marines, praising the crew for defending the country.

Ahmadinejad said he was sorry that the sailors and marines had been arrested, and he criticized Britain for sending Faye Turney, one of the 15 detainees, into the Gulf, pointing out that she is a woman with a child.

"How can you justify seeing a mother away from her home, her children? Why don't they respect family values in the West?" he asked of the British government.

Ahmadinejad asked Blair not to put the sailors on trial for admitting they had crossed into Iranian waters. Some of the sailors were shown on video admitting they had entered Iranian waters.

The U.S. and Britain have said the Royal Navy crew was in the Iraqi part of the Shaat al Arab waterway — a border that has historically been disputed between Iraq and Iran.

Britain wants direct talks with Iran to end sailor standoff (cbc.ca)

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Britain says it wants direct bilateral talks to resolve a standoff over 15 British sailors being held by Iran after officials spoke for the first time Tuesday with Tehran's chief negotiator.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Downing Street office said in a statement late Tuesday that "both sides share a desire for an early resolution to this issue through direct talks."

Ali Larijani, Iran's chief international negotiator, has suggested a delegation could determine whether the sailors had strayed into Iranian territory in the Persian Gulf.
(CBC)

"The U.K. has proposed direct bilateral discussions and awaits an Iranian response on when these can begin," the statement read.

It came just hours after British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett warned against expecting a swift resolution to the crisis.

Earlier Tuesday, Blair told a Scottish radio show that he drew hope of an end to the crisis after Ali Larijani, Iran's chief international negotiator, suggested that a diplomatic solution could be found.

"If they want to resolve this in a diplomatic way, the door is open," said Blair. But if negotiations to win the quick release of the sailors and marines stalls, Britain will "take an increasingly tougher position," he warned.

In an interview with Britain's Channel 4 television news on Monday, Larijani said there's no need to put the sailors on trial.

"We are not interested in letting this issue get further complicated," he said through an interpreter. He said Iran's priority "is to solve the problem through proper diplomatic channels."

Larijani also suggested a delegation could determine whether the sailors had strayed into Iranian territory in the Persian Gulf, but he did not say what sort of delegation he had in mind.

The crew was detained by Iranian Revolutionary Guards on March 23 while patrolling for smugglers in the Persian Gulf as part of a United Nations-mandated force. At the time, their boat was in the Shatt al-Arab, a waterway divided by a disputed border between Iraq and Iran.

Dispute over waters

Tehran contends the sailors were in Iranian waters, while Britain says they were in Iraqi waters and has refused Tehran's demands for an apology.

On Tuesday, Blair outlined two possible approaches to the incident.

"One is to try settle this by way of peaceful and calm negotiation to get our people back as quickly as possible," he said. "The other is to make it clear that if that is not possible that we have to take an increasingly tougher position."

British officials earlier condemned television footage of the captured sailors confessing to having strayed into Iranian waters. Britain said the statements appeared coerced.

On Monday, Iranian state radio said Tehran will no longer broadcast videos of captured British sailors because of what it called "positive changes" in Britain's negotiating stance.

The reports did not specify what those changes are, nor did they quote any government official on the decision.

But a short time after state radio made its announcement, a British official said the government is willing to discuss ways to avoid territorial disputes in the Persian Gulf to free the sailors.

Britain, however, wants an unconditional release of the crew and is not negotiating for their freedom, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the crisis.

Iranian diplomat freed

Meanwhile on Monday, an Iranian diplomat in Iraq seized two months ago by gunmen in Iraqi uniforms was released, a senior Iraqi foreign ministry official said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to release information, the official said his government was "intensively" seeking the release of five other Iranians detained there by the United States to "help in the release of the British sailors and marines."

In January, the U.S. military seized the Iranians in a raid in northern Iraq, accusing them of links to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard faction that funds and arms insurgents and militias in Iraq.

The Iraqi official would not say who had custody of the Iranian diplomat, Jalal Sharafi, who was released Monday and returned to Tehran on Tuesday. Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency confirmed Sharafi's release.

Kidnapped Iranian Diplomat Freed, Iraqi Says (nytimes.com)

By ALISSA J. RUBIN

Published: April 4, 2007

BAGHDAD, April 3 — An Iranian diplomat kidnapped by armed men wearing uniforms of the Iraqi Security forces was freed here Tuesday, Iraq’s foreign minister said, adding that he was continuing to work to free five other Iranians held by American forces and was optimistic that they would be released soon.

The freeing of the diplomat is unrelated to the negotiations over the British sailors and marines seized by Iran for trespassing into their waters, the foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said in an interview.

“People are trying to link this to the British sailors’ case. Really, it has no connection whatsoever. Even for the other Iranian detainees, we’ve been repeatedly asking the M.N.F.I. to release them,” Mr. Zebari said, referring to the American-led coalition, the Multi-National Force-Iraq.

He added, “We have a sense they are going to be released; we some good pledges that they will be released after the investigation is finished.”

Separately, an official spokesman for Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani said that reports published Monday and Tuesday were “completely untrue” that said the highest Shiite clerics disagreed with a plan to liberalize Iraq’s de-Baathification law, which currently puts sharp restrictions on former Baathists holding to government positions.

Since Ayatollah Sistani rarely speaks for himself, but makes his views known through written statements and clerics affiliated with him, it can be difficult to determine his true views. But Tuesday’s comments suggested he was backing away from wholesale criticism of the de-Baathification overhaul proposed jointly by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani.

The proposed measure has the support of the United States government, and that makes it more difficult for some Iraqis, including the senior Shiite clerics, to embrace it.

The American involvement in the detention of at least some of the Iranian diplomats has forced Iraq to undertake delicate and difficult negotiations with two powerful countries on which it relies for support: the United States and Iran. Mr. Zebari said the seizure of the accredited diplomat who was freed Tuesday had been “embarrassing for my government.”

“We are treading a very thin line,” he said. “We are in a very difficult position to balance these two conflicting interest.”

The kidnapping and detention incidents have not helped Iraq’s efforts to persuade officials in Tehran to stop Iranian forces who appear to be arming and financing the insurgency in Iraq. But the diplomat’s release “paves the way for some good will gestures,” Mr. Zebari said.

Other politicians thought the timing of the diplomat’s release was difficult to separate entirely from the negotiations over the British sailors. “It’s a curious coincidence,” said Ahmad Chalabi, the former Pentagon favorite who has ties to Iran and is in charge of the government’s de-Baathification commission.

The released Iranian diplomat, Jalal Sharafi, second secretary at Tehran’s mission in Baghdad, walked into the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday morning, Mr. Zebari said. He added that he remained uncertain who had kidnapped Mr. Sharafi.

Mr. Sharafi was seized more than eight weeks ago as he emerged from a bank in the middle-class, predominantly Shiite Baghdad neighborhood of Karada. The Iraqi police stopped a car with four passengers that was following the car in which the kidnappers had placed Mr. Sharafi. The four men were taken to the police station. They said they worked for an Iraqi security service, but when pressed, the security services denied that the men worked for them in any official capacity, Mr. Zebari said.

“We went to our security services and said, ‘Do they work for you, do you have him?’ They denied it,” Mr. Zebari said. “We went to the American military, the intelligence services — they all denied they had him. But my advice to my government was to keep the four in detention, until the diplomat was released,” Mr. Zebari said.

The four men remain detained in a Ministry of Interior facility, Mr. Zebari said. Although Mr. Zebari was uncertain who kidnapped the man, others familiar with the case said they believe those responsible work for the Iraqi Intelligence Service, which is affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Zebari said that he was similarly frustrated by the case of the five Iranians seized by American troops in January in a raid in Erbil in northern Iraq, but that at least in that case he knew where they were held. He said because of the detention of the six Iranians (the five in Erbil and the diplomat in Karada), Iran very nearly refused to come to a regional meeting on Iraq held in Baghdad on March 17. That meeting included representatives of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council as well as neighboring countries and international organizations.

The unhappiness over plans to east the de-Baathification law looked unlikely to ease anytime soon.

Hamid al-Khafaf, a spokesman for Ayatollah Sistani in Beirut, Lebanon, and one of the few who is authorized to speak in his name, said: “We have warned all media not to use any statement attributed to Sistani without having it written or approved by his office.”

News reports on Monday about Ayatollah Sistani’s view of the de-Baathification law was “absolutely untrue,” Mr. Khafaf said.

Three Shiite politicians reached Tuesday said that Ayatollah Sistani and other senior Shiite clerics known as the marjaia expressed in private conversations differing concerns about changes to the de-Baathification law, but that they agreed a compromise had to be reached among the different drafts, some of which take a far less liberal approach to former Baathists than the one submitted by Mr. Maliki and Mr. Talabani.

“The marjaia know there are different drafts, they want this to be up to parliament,” said Jaber Habeeb, a professor of political science at Baghdad University and a member of the United Iraqi Alliance, the main Shiite bloc in the Iraqi Parliament.

The de-Baathification overhaul is far more complicated than it appears at first. One of the worries of the senior Shiite clerics is that in areas of southern Iraq where Saddam Hussein’s regime was especially despised, a law that is perceived as too generous to former Baathists could set off a sectarian backlash that would worsen the country’s security situation, said several Shiites who had talked to the senior Shiite clerics and their representatives.

At the same time, however, the senior Shiite clerics want a change in the law that helps lower-level Baathists, many of whom are Shiites, who joined the party as a prerequisite to getting government jobs.

Seventeen people were killed in violence around Iraq on Tuesday and 10 bodies were found in Baghdad and one in Diyala Province.

Still, the Iraqi government announced late Tuesday that the curfew in Baghdad would change to allow people to stay out until 10 p.m. local time. Previously, the curfew was at 8 p.m.

The United States military announced that a marine was killed Monday in Anbar Province.

Iran releases new pictures of captured Britons

By Duncan Hooper and Emma Henry

Last Updated: 4:11pm BST 03/04/2007

Your view: How should we tackle Iran?

Iran has today published fresh pictures of some of the 15 captured British service personnel as Tony Blair said that negotiations to free them were entering a "critical" phase.

The Prime Minister said that the "door is open" to a diplomatic solution to the 12-day-old crisis, if the Iranians wanted one. But he also warned Teheran that Britain would take progressively tougher measures if there were no moves to free the detainees.

The pictures released by an Iranian news agency show the sailors and marines dressed in track suits and smiling. For the first time, pictures featuring Leading Seaman Faye Turney - the only woman in the group - did not show her wearing a headscarf.

The pictures were released as Iran's vice president, Parviz Davoudi, called on Britain to accept that the personnel had crossed into Iranian waters.

"Certainly, if Britain accepts that they have illegally trespassed into Iran and guarantee that they won't repeat it, the issue will obviously become negotiable and can be resolved through a rational process," he said.

The Government, however, remains adamant that the personnel were operating legitimately in Iraqi territorial waters in the northern Gulf when they were seized by the Iranians on March 23.

Last night, one of Iran's most senior politicians had offered new hope for the swift release of 15 captured British sailors and marines, saying direct negotiations were underway and that the situation was "quite resolvable".

Speaking to Channel 4 News, Ali Larijani, chief of the Iranian National Security Council, indicated the fourteen men and one woman would not face a show trial.

Today, Iranian radio cited Mr Larijani saying that the British Government has started diplomatic talks with the foreign ministry in Teheran in order to "resolve the issue of the arrest of the British military personnel."

He suggested that Britain would need to send a diplomatic delegation to Teheran, admit that its Navy had made a mistake by straying into Iranian waters and guarantee that the error would not be repeated.

The Prime Minister said this morning that the remarks seemed to offer "some prospect but the most important thing is to get these people back."

"All the way through this we've really had two tracks on this: one is to make sure Iran understands that the pressure is there available to us if this thing has to be hard and tough and long," he told Real Radio while in Glasgow for the Holyrood election.

"On the other hand, to say all the way through we're not looking for confrontation over this and actually the most important thing is to get the people back safe and sound and if they want to resolve this in a diplomatic way the door is open."

Mr Larijani had given further hope to the anxious families of the eight sailors and seven Marines, saying it was "our interest to solve the problem as soon as possible".

There was "no benefit" in keeping British troops "away from their families from a humanitarian view", he said.

However, he insisted that the Navy had strayed into Iran and had GPS evidence to prove it.

Mr Larijani said Britain should be "brave enough" to admit "their mistake, confess to it and leave".

"The solution is very clear," he said. "First of all they have to put aside the irrational moves and resorting to the language of force.

"Secondly, there is a difference of view between the UK Government and the Iranian government and this issue should be resolved bilaterally.

"They should clarify the fact of whether they have been in our territorial waters or not."

He appeared irritated by the Government accusing Iran of taking the service personnel hostage and said the European Union had "started to condemn Iran without knowing the facts".

He accused the EU of using "the language of force" by expressing "unconditional support" for Britain and threatening "appropriate measures" unless the captives were released quickly.

Before Mr Larijani's interview the Prime Minister's spokesman said there was "a lot going on behind the scenes".

It appeared that the Iranian politician's appearance on live British television was Iran's response after an exchange of notes with the British embassy in Teheran.

"The Iranians know our position. They know that stage-managed TV appearances aren't going to affect our position," a Foreign Office spokesman said.

Mr Larijani appeared to indicate that there would be no further televised appearances by British personnel confessing and apologising for entering Iran.

It had been claimed that all 15 British service personnel had confessed to illegally entering the country's waters but state-run radio in Iran reported that any further confessions were not being broadcast because of "positive changes" in Britain's stance.

J. Stewert

Its not that I support Iran, I can not trust the US / Uk

Robert Fisk: The war of humiliation

Published: 02 April 2007
Independent

Our Marines are hostages. Two more were shown on Iranian TV. Petrol bombs burst behind the walls of the British embassy in Tehran. But it's definitely not the war on terror. It's the war of humiliation. The humiliation of Britain, the humiliation of Tony Blair, of the British military, of George Bush and the whole Iraqi shooting match. And the master of humiliation - even if Tony Blair doesn't realise it - is Iran, a nation which feels itself forever humiliated by the West.

Oh how pleased the Iranians must have been to hear Messers Blair and Bush shout for the "immediate" release of the luckless 15 - this Blair-Bush insistence has assuredly locked them up for weeks - because it is a demand that can be so easily ignored. And will be.

"Inexcusable behaviour," roared Bush on Saturday - and the Iranians loved it. The Iranian Minister meanwhile waited for a change in Britain's "behaviour".

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust-denying President from hell, calls Blair "arrogant and selfish" - and so say all of us, by the way - after refusing to play to the crowd at the United Nations. They'll release "serviceperson" Faye Turney. Then they won't release her.

Veiled Faye with her cigarette and her backcloth of cheaply flowered curtains, producing those preposterous letters of cloying friendship towards the "Iranian people" while abjectly apologising for the British snoop into Iranian waters - written, I strongly suspect, by the lads from the Ministry of Islamic Guidance - is the star of the Iranian show.

Back in 1980, when Tehran staged its much more ambitious takeover of the US embassy, the star was a blubbering marine - a certain Sergeant Ladell Maples - who was induced to express his appreciation for Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution just before America's prime-time television news.

The Iranians, you see, understand the West. And they understand it much better than we understand - or bother to understand - Iran.

We have forgotten the years of Allied occupation in the Second World War, the deposition of the pro-German Shah and then, humiliation of humiliations, the overthrow of the democratic Prime Minister, Mohamed Mossadeq, engineered by the CIA's Allen Dulles and an eccentric British scholar of Greek, an ex-Special Operations Executive operative - "Monty" Woodhouse by name - with a few guns and a pile of dollars. And the Iranians remember well, how back came the Shah of Iran, our "policeman" in the Gulf, the King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, descendant of Cyrus the Great, to stretch out the young Iranian men and women of the resistance on the toasting racks of their Savak torturers.

Nor have the Iranians any real intention of putting Faye and her chums in front of any court. They'd far rather have the Brits chomping through their "nan" bread on Sky TV, courtesy, of course, of Tehran's Arabic "Al-Alam" channel. And did you notice that little "exclusive" label in the top left-hand corner of the screen when Rifleman Nathan Summers decided to go public?

How the Iranians love mimicking their oppressors. When the gold braid of the Ministry of Defence produce a complexity of maps to prove our boys were in Iraqi waters, the Iranians produce a humble coastguard with a Minotaur map to show that they were in the Iranian briney.

The Union Jack still flies on their rubber boat - but the Iranian banner floats above it. No one has yet explained, I notice, why our boys and girls in blue carry rifles on their sailing adventures if their duty is to hand them over when attacked. Are we actually trying to supply the Revolutionary Guards with more weapons?

But behind all this lie some dark questions - with, I fear, some still unknown but dark answers. The Iranian security services are convinced that the British security services are trying to provoke the Arabs of Iran's Khuzestan province to rise up against the Islamic Republic. Bombs have exploded there, one of them killing a truck-load of Revolutionary Guards, and Tehran blamed MI5. Outrageous, they said. Inexcusable.

The Brits made no comment, even when the Iranians hanged a man accused of the killings from a crane; he had, they said, been working for London.

Are the SAS in south-western Iran, just as the British claim the Iranians are in south-eastern Iraq, harassing the boys in Basra with new-fangled bombs? Will the Americans release the five Iranians issuing visas to Kurds in Arbil whom they locked up a couple of months ago. No, says Bush. Well, we shall see.

There is a lot we do not know - or care to know - about all this. In the meantime, however, it will be left to Blair, Bush and the merchants of the SKY-BBC-CNN-FOX-CBS-NBC-ABC axis of shlock-and-awe to play the Iranian game. Will they put Faye on trial? Will our boys be threatened with execution? Answer: no, but be sure we'll soon be told by the Iranians that they are all spies. A lie, needless to say. But Blair will fulminate and Bush will roar and the Iranians will sit back and enjoy every second of it.

The Iranians died in their tens of thousands to destroy Saddam's legions. And now they watch us wringing our hands over 15 lost souls. This is a big-time movie, the cinemascope of political humiliation. And the Iranians not only know how to stage the drama. They've even written Blair's script.

And he obligingly reads it to cue.

New TV footage shows captured servicemen

Footage of two of the 15 captured Royal Navy personnel was broadcast on Iranian state television last night.

The television station Al-Alam released footage of the captives standing in front of a map of the Persian Gulf where the sailors and marines were captured 10 days ago.

The captives' speech was not initially broadcast, but one of the station's newscasters said they had "confessed" to entering Iranian waters "illegally", according to translations.

The British government maintains that the vessel was in Iraqi waters. The footage was condemned by the Foreign Office last night as "unacceptable".

The two men were seen pointing to a picture of a boat, while the voiceover described how the servicemen had left HMS Cornwall on 23 March and arrived into Iranian waters in a small boat at 10am local time. The broadcaster said hostages were receiving "good and humanitarian treatment".

The same station last week released footage of Faye Turney, the only woman among the captives, and Nathan Thomas Summers, whose footage was released on Friday.

The Ministry of Defence said they would not be identifying the servicemen. The families of all the personnel are understood to have been contacted last night to alert them of Al-Alam's plan to release the footage.

Prior to the release of the footage, Foreign Office minister Des Browne had indicated that a diplomatic solution to the crisis could be sought when he said that "direct bilateral talks" with Iran over the capture were ongoing.

Helen McCormack

Iran outlines conditions for release of UK sailors

Julian Borger and Ian Black
Tuesday April 3, 2007
The Guardian

Iran's most senior diplomat, Ali Larijani, called for a "delegation" to rule on whether a British naval patrol entered Iranian waters last month before his government would release the 15 marines and sailors it is holding captive.

Laying out what appeared to be a vague road map for the freeing of the British personnel, Mr Larijani said that, if it was found they had crossed into Iranian territory, there should be an apology and they would then be released.
He gave some conciliatory signals in an interview with Channel Four News, saying the Iranian government was not interested in putting the detainees on trial, but warned that might change if Britain attempted to impose more international pressure on Tehran. "We are not interested in this issue getting more complicated," said Mr Larijani, the secretary-general of Iran's national security council.

Iranian TV has shown previously unseen footage of four of the 15 British service personnel held captive. Photograph: Getty

"Our interest is in solving this problem as soon as possible. This issue can be resolved, and there is no need for any trial. There should be a delegation to review the case ... to clarify whether they have been in our territorial waters or not."

Mr Larijani did not specify whether the delegation he was requesting should be British or international, but he did say the issue should be solved "bilaterally". His remarks could be a response to an offer by Britain to send a team of naval experts and diplomats to discuss how to avoid a repetition of the crisis. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said last night: "We are still studying Dr Larijani's remarks.

"There remain some differences between us, but we can confirm we share his preference for early bilateral discussions to find a diplomatic solution to this problem. We will be following this up with the Iranian authorities tomorrow, given our shared desire to make early progress."

However, British officials are adamant that the team of experts would not be going to negotiate the captives' release, and would focus on the future rather than on the March 23 incident. They said proposed talks would ideally improve the current atmosphere, but would not include acceptance of Iranian claims that the British patrol had entered Iranian waters.

Earlier in the day, Iranian media noted "positive changes" in negotiations with Britain over the crisis. They said that was the reason they did not broadcast "confessions" of a territorial incursion by all 15 captives, which Iran says it has recorded. So far, four have been shown "admitting" that they had entered Iranian waters.

The head of Iran's parliamentary committee on foreign policy and national security, Allaeddin Broujerdi, seemed to echo the British suggestion for talks yesterday when he told state radio: "There is a need for a bilateral agreement to prevent such an event in the future."

In seeking the captives' release, Britain has been seeking help from Iran's allies. Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, has intervened, the Guardian has learned. Mr Assad raised the issue with the Iranian foreign minister, Manuchehr Mottaki, at the Arab summit conference in Riyadh last Wednesday. It came shortly before Mr Mottaki told an Iranian TV station that the captured sailor Leading Seaman Faye Turney would be released shortly. The move followed a direct appeal to Damascus by Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Tony Blair's chief foreign policy adviser.

It came only five months after Sir Nigel visited the Syrian capital in an attempt to persuade Mr Assad to distance himself from Iran. British officials have been impressed by Syria's readiness to help in the dispute with Iran, and have singled it out for praise in recent days.

John Bolton, the Bush administration's former ambassador to the UN, yesterday criticised the British government for its "weak" and "passive" response to Iran over the captives. "If I were sitting in Tehran, I would say, 'I played this card against the Brits and they did everything but plead with me to give these people back'," he told CNN. "I think that tells the Iranians quite a bit about European resolve."