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Blair warns Iran over sailors
27/03/2007 14:56 - (SA)
London - British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Iran on Tuesday that the stand-off over the capture of 15 sailors would enter a "different phase" if diplomatic efforts to secure their release failed.
Blair said all efforts were focused on securing their swift return through diplomacy, but warned Britain could not allow its service personnel to be seized with "no justification whatever".
"What we are trying to do at the moment is to pursue this through the diplomatic channels and make the Iranian government understand these people have to be released," he told GMTV television.
"I hope we manage to get them to realise they have to release them. If not, then this will move into a different phase.
"At the moment, what we are trying to do is to make sure that that diplomatic initiative works," he said, adding: "There is absolutely no justification whatever for holding them."
'Routine' duties
Britain says the personnel - eight sailors and seven marines - were conducting "routine" anti-smuggling duties in Iraqi waters when they were seized at gunpoint in the Shatt al-Arab waterway in the north of the Gulf on Friday.
"Our first concern is for their welfare and to get them released as quickly as possible," Blair said, adding that that there were no new details on the sailors' situation.
Pressed on what a "different phase" might involve, Blair said: "Well, we will just have to see.
"But what they should understand is that we cannot have a situation where our servicemen and women are seized when actually they are in Iraqi waters under a UN mandate, patrolling perfectly rightly and in accordance with that mandate, and then effectively captured and taken to Iran.
"The most important thing is their welfare, I am trying to get this resolved in as diplomatic and sensible a way as possible," he said.
- AFP
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