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UK approaches Iran over sailors
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3828149.stm
UK diplomats have been holding talks with Iran after the seizure of three British naval craft and their crews in a waterway shared with Iraq.
Iran said the boats had entered its part of the Shatt al-Arab waterway without permission on Monday morning and were duly impounded.
Interrogators have been questioning the eight Britons detained.
A British embassy spokesman in Tehran said he was looking forward to a swift solution to an "unfortunate mistake".
The sailors were part of a Royal Navy training team on their way to Basra, the UK defence ministry reports.
Whereabouts unknown
The UK defence ministry said the eight sailors were from a Royal Navy training team based in southern Iraq, and that they had been detained while delivering a boat from Umm Qasr to Basra.
They had been travelling in three boats which were unarmed but the crews had been carrying their personal weapons, it added.
The confirmation came several hours after news of the incident emerged via Iranian state-run television.
At first, British officials merely said that they had lost contact with the vessels.
The BBC's Tehran correspondent, Jim Muir, says the British embassy there has not been told where the sailors are being held or who is holding them.
Film of the detained crew has been broadcast on Iranian television, which said weapons and maps on the vessels had been confiscated.
Damaged relations
A defence ministry spokesman in London said Britain had been using boats to train the Iraqi river patrol service, and the craft may have strayed across the maritime border by mistake.
"The waterway runs over a mile wide. The border runs pretty much down the middle of it," he said.
Our correspondent says that from a minor border incident that might have been resolved on the spot, the affair has now moved firmly into the diplomatic sphere.
It is expected that higher-level contacts will take place soon to discuss and try to resolve the issue, our correspondent adds.
The BBC's diplomatic correspondent, Bridget Kendall, describes UK-Iranian relations as a difficult balancing act, with British forces in southern Iraq apparently under orders to keep border tensions with Iran to a minimum.
Our correspondent says the worry remains that it could easily escalate into a more serious crisis.
So far neither side has levelled damaging accusations at the other, but our Tehran correspondent says it comes at a time when relations between the two countries are tenser than usual.
Hardliners have staged a series of angry demonstrations outside the British embassy in Tehran in recent weeks to protest at the occupation of Iraq.
Britain has also been strongly criticised too for its role in helping draft a tough resolution on Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna last week.
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