UN-Truth

Wire services are reporting that
“Britain took its case to free its 15 sailors and marines held by Iran to the United Nations on Thursday, asking the Security Council to support a statement that would ‘deplore’ Tehran’s action and demand their immediate release. But Security Council diplomats said the brief press statement circulated by Britain’s UN Mission is likely to face problems from Russia and others because it says the Britons were ‘operating in Iraqi waters’ — a point that Iran contests…The British statement was to be discussed later Thursday at a closed-door meeting of the Security Council. The text circulated to the 14 other council members said: ‘Members of the Security Council deplore the continuing detention by the government of Iran of 15 (United Kingdom) naval personnel’. It added that the British crew was ‘operating in Iraqi waters as part of the Multinational Force-Iraq under a mandate from the Security Council under resolution 1723 and at the request of the government of Iraq’ and it called for their ‘immediate release’. A press statement is the weakest action the Security Council can take, but the statement must be approved by all council members. Diplomats said Britain was also weighing a stronger presidential statement, which unlike a press statement, is read at a formal Security Council meeting and becomes part of its official record. The council diplomats said informal discussion of the proposed British statement indicated the issue of where the incident took place raised problems for some council members, including Russia. Some members also want to hear the Iranian side, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the discussions were private…[British Prime Minister Tony] Blair’s official spokesman said Britain wanted to resolve the crisis quickly and without having a
‘confrontation over this’. ‘We are not seeking to put Iran in a corner. We are simply saying, Please release the personnel who should not have been seized in the first place,’ said the spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.” http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070329/ap_on_re_mi_ea/
british_seized_iran_156;_ylt=AjkizDWZp.2r7XX3xw3UIhBbbBAF

A report from Agence France Presse states that “Iran insists the group of sailors had entered its waters at six different points before they were arrested and Thursday demanded that Britain apologize. ‘The logical solution … is for the British authorities to accept the reality, present their apologies to the great Iranian people’, armed forces spokesman General Alireza Afshar was cited as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency. The head of Iran’s supreme national security council, Ali Larijani, earlier said the only woman captive, Faye Turney, would not be released because of Britain’s
‘incorrect’ attitude. ‘It was announced that a woman in the group would be freed, but [this development] was met with an incorrect attitude. Naturally, [the release] will be suspended and it will not take place’, Larijani said on state television.
His announcement came a day after London said it was freezing ties with Tehran and despite the intervention of UN chief Ban. Larijani, who is also Iran’s chief negotiator in its nuclear dispute with Western powers, threatened to pursue a ‘legal path’ in the crisis, which has sent oil prices to six-month highs. ‘Instead of sending a technical team to examine the problem, they kicked up a media storm, announced a freeze in relations and spoke about the Security Council. That will not resolve the problem. They have miscalculated’, said Larijani.” http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070329-104012-7918r

Despite Britain’s assertion, apparently backed up by a statement from the Iraqi Foreign Minister, that the service personnel were apprehended in Iraqi territorial waters, experts on international boundaries and maritime delimitation say the situation is not so clear.

The Scotsman newspaper reported today that: “The boarding party from HMS Cornwall was seized after completing a routine search of an Indian-flagged cargo ship. Vice-Admiral Style said the ship’s master had confirmed his position was 29 degrees 50.36 minutes North, 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East, placing the vessel well within Iraqi waters, where it remained at anchor.
The Ministry of Defence also released a picture of a global positioning satellite device in HMS Cornwall’s Lynx helicopter as it overflew the ship, confirming its position. Vice-Admiral Style said that coalition forces backed by the Iraqi navy had carried out 66 such boardings in the northern Gulf since March - four of them in the same area as the Royal Navy party were seized - without incident. He said interviews with the Lynx [helicopter] crew, which was in the air at the time, and the master of the cargo ship indicated they had been ‘ambushed’ by Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boats.
A senior officer said it had taken the two Iranian patrol boats - equipped with machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades - three minutes to reach them from the coast. In contrast, the boarding party had only SA80 assault rifles and sidearms.” http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=485142007

The [U.S.] Marine Corps Times posted an AP story on its news page that reports that “British officials have said the 15 Britons were taken captive after completing a search of a civilian ship near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which forms the border between Iran and Iraq. In London, Vice Adm. Charles Style said the British boats were seized at 29 degrees 50.36 minutes north latitude and 48 degrees 43.08 minutes east longitude. He said that position had been confirmed by an Indian-flagged merchant ship boarded by the sailors and marines. But the position, outside the waterway in the Gulf, is an area where no legal boundary exists, leaving it unclear whose territory it lies in, said Kaiyan Kaikobad, author of The Shatt al-Arab Boundary Question. ‘What we do have is a de facto state-practiced boundary — a line both countries have been observing on the spot’, he said. ‘The problem is that though the British have drawn a line where they claim the de facto line is, we haven’t seen an Iranian version’.”
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/
2007/03/ap_british_sailors_iran_070329/

One e-mail today in an exchange between members of an academic international boundaries group stated that “The iranian version of the arrest position even as corrected may still fall on the seaward side of the baseline where the disagreement could indeed involve a disputed border, so what we may ultimately be looking at here in this dispute about the arrest position could be a question of whether it will be necessary to entertain a border dispute.”

What is clear, however, is that the British service personnel should be released.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting from Vienna that “The United States and key allies are pressing the U.N. nuclear monitoring agency to find Iran in violation of its commitment to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty over Tehran’s refusal to allow remote monitoring of its underground uranium enrichment plant, diplomats said Thursday. The International Atomic Energy Agency — the UN monitor — has itself increased the pressure on Tehran, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because their information was confidential. The diplomats, who are accredited or otherwise linked to the agency, told The Associated Press that a senior IAEA official recently told the Iranians to respond positively to an agency request for additional cameras at the Natanz enrichment site by the end of this week. At issue is Teheran’s refusal to allow comprehensive monitoring of its expanding enrichment program at the underground facility at Natanz, where it has linked up hundreds of centrifuges. Although enriched uranium can serve as the fissile core of nuclear weapons, Iran insists it wants the technology only to generate power.
In a February report to the IAEA’s 35-nation board and the U.N. Security Council — which has imposed sanctions because of Tehran’s refusal to freeze enrichment — IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei said Iran ‘declined to agree’ to his agency’s call for remote monitoring, including cameras. A compromise was reached in which IAEA inspectors were allowed increased access to the plant, but the agency said that remote monitoring would have to be implemented once 500 centrifuges had been installed at Natanz. The agency’s request for a positive response on the part of Iran was made recently by Olli Heinonen, the IAEA deputy director general of the Iran file. Diplomats said he delivered it both in written form as well as verbally in stronger terms. It was unclear on Thursday whether Heinonen’s move was prompted by agency concerns that Iran was approaching the 500-centrifuge limit stated in ElBaradei’s report. While the number of centrifuges that are partially or totally assembled underground at Natanz is thought to have exceeded that number, some agency officials argue that the definition of 500 assembled centrifuges means that the machines are hooked up in series and running — although not necessarily enriching material — a stage that one Western diplomat said had not yet been reached. Still, the United States, the strongest proponent of tough sanctions against Iran for its nuclear defiance, was already sounding out other board nations about their readiness to meet in special session to find Tehran in violation of agreements linked to the Nonproliferation Treaty because of its refusal to heed the agency request, the diplomats said. Agency experts were withholding judgment, pending examination of Iran’s agreements to see if its refusal to allow installation of extra cameras giving a full overview of its Natanz operations was a violation of the treaty, they said. A full picture of Natanz operations is important to the agency to be able to ascertain what grade of enriched uranium the plant will be producing if and when the Iranians decide to start production of such material. Low-level enriched uranium is used to generate power — which Iran asserts is its only goal. But with minor modifications, such plants can also churn out weapons-grade uranium as part of a nuclear arms program.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070329/ap_on_re_eu/nuclear_iran

Filed under: Iran, UN Security Council