Britain freezes contacts with Iran

LONDON — Britain on Wednesday froze all government contacts with Iran as the Islamic Republic came under mounting international and domestic pressure to release 15 British sailors captured in the northern Persian Gulf.

British officials released detailed maps and coordinates they said proved the detained navy and marine personnel were operating 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi territorial waters, and announced that they would have no ties with Iran except for talks to win the captives' release.

Iran said Wednesday the detainees were arrested 0.3 miles inside Iranian waters, underscoring what some experts say is the uncertain nature of the boundary that is at the heart of the dispute.

"We are now in a new phase of diplomatic activity," British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett told Parliament. "We will, therefore, be imposing a freeze on all other official bilateral business with Iran until this situation is resolved."

The freeze will include diplomatic contacts, trade missions and the issuance of visas to Iranian government officials, the Foreign Office said.

The action came as Iranian TV broadcast footage of the captives, including Leading Seaman Faye Turney, 26, who told an off-camera interviewer that she and her colleagues had trespassed into Iranian waters.

"I am so sorry we did, because I know we wouldn't be here now if we hadn't," Turney said in a handwritten letter to her family that was also shown on the broadcast.

The British government immediately protested, calling it "completely unacceptable" for footage of the detained sailors and marines to be shown on television.

The images, on Iran's state-operated Arabic language Alalam TV, showed the detainees in a small inflatable raft, which apparently was shot during the boat-seizing operation, then cut to them dining. Turney was then shown wearing a black headscarf and smoking a cigarette, red-faced and apparently nervous.

"I am being well looked after. I am fed three meals a day, and have a constant supply of fluids," she said in her letter, which was later released by the Iranian Embassy in London.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Wednesday that Britain must admit that its 15 sailors and marines entered Iranian waters in order to resolve the standoff.

The Iranian official also backed off a prediction that Turney could be freed Wednesday or today, but said Tehran agreed to allow British officials to meet with the detainees.

Mottaki said that if the alleged entry into Iranian waters was a mistake, "this can be solved. But they have to show that it was a mistake. That will help us to end this issue."

"Admitting the mistake will facilitate a solution to the problem," he said late Wednesday night in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he was attending an Arab summit.

The Iranian Embassy in Britain released a statement, apparently seeking to cool the dispute that has sent oil prices soaring and raised fears of a serious confrontation. It emphasized that the incident was not related to the conflict over Iran's nuclear program, or the recent vote by the United Nations Security Council imposing more sanctions against Iran.

"At this stage, the investigation is being continued, and all British marines and sailors are in good heath and condition, and they enjoy welfare and Iranian hospitality," it added. The Iranian government has come under increasing domestic pressure to end the standoff, which threatens to bring increased international sanctions against a nation already isolated both economically and diplomatically over the nuclear issue.

American warplanes screamed off two aircraft carriers Tuesday as the U.S. Navy staged its largest show of force in the Persian Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, launching a mammoth exercise meant as a message to the Iranians.

The maneuvers with 15 warships and more than 100 aircraft were sure to heighten tensions with Iran. While they would not say when the war games were planned, U.S. commanders insisted the exercises were not a direct response to Friday's seizure of the British sailors and marines, but they also made clear that the flexing of the Navy's military might was intended as a warning.

Meanwhile, opposition figures in Tehran spoke out for the first time against the hard-line government's actions.

"The capture of the 15 British sailors was a blunder from the very beginning and the continuation of it is a mistake as well," said Rajabali Mazrouie, a former lawmaker and journalist for the daily newspaper Sarmayie in Tehran.

But hardliners also continued to press their case. Conservative students near Iran's southwestern Shalamcheh border outpost demonstrated for a second day, burning British Prime Minister Tony Blair in effigy and demanding that authorities put the detained sailors on trial.

In an attempt to boost their case on the location of the capture, the British government released the first detailed account of the incident, including the global positioning system coordinates that officials said prove the British navy vessel did not enter Iranian waters.

Vice Adm. Charles Style, deputy chief of the defense staff, said the small, inflatable British patrol vessel was conducting a routine boarding of an Indian-flagged merchant vessel 7.5 nautical miles southeast of Iraq's Al-Faw peninsula. Style said the master of the cargo vessel confirmed it was anchored in that location, inside Iraqi territorial waters.

Iran, he said, has offered British diplomats two different versions of the seizure. On Saturday, he said, Iran provided a set of coordinates for the incident, which British diplomats pointed out were within Iraqi territorial waters. Two days later, he said, Iran gave out a second set of coordinates 1,800 yards away, inside Iranian waters, and more than two nautical miles away from where Britain believes the incident occurred.

The Associated Press reported on Foreign Minister Mottaki's statements and the U.S. Navy exercises in the Persian Gulf.