Iranian president announces release of British naval personnel

INTERNATIONAL HERALD
LONDON: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said Wednesday that he would immediately release 15 British sailors and marines who have been held captive in Iran since March 23.

Ahmadinejad said at a news conference in Tehran that he was giving the British military personnel amnesty and a pardon.

"I announce their freedom and their return to their people," he said. "They will be free after our meeting. They will go to the airport and will join their families."

The Iranian president said the decision to release the prisoners was not part of a swap with Iranian prisoners in Iraq.

"Our government has pardoned them, it is a gift from our people" he said. "It has nothing to do with this analysis. If we were to move forward on that basis things would have looked different. We approached the subject on a humanitarian basis. It was a unilateral decision on our end."

The announcement came after Ahmadinejad had taken the opportunity to pin a medal on the uniform of an Iranian naval commander who had captured the British sailors and marines.

The Britons were seized at gunpoint in disputed waters in the northern Persian Gulf. Iran contended that they illegally entered Iranian territorial waters. Britain argued that they were in Iraqi waters on a routine anti-smuggling patrol at the invitation of the Iraqi government and the United Nations.

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain had said Tuesday that the next 48 hours would be "fairly critical" in resolving the dispute.

"All the way through this, we've had two tracks on this," Blair said in an interview with Real Radio in Glasgow. "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."

The other option is a peaceful resolution, the prime minister said. "We're not looking for confrontation over this," he had said. "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."

Blair had said that comments made by Ali Larijani, a top Iranian security official, on British television on Monday that "there is no need for a trial" and that "this issue should be resolved bilaterally" offered some prospect of a way to proceed. "But we need to hear from them direct," the prime minister had said, referring to the Iranians.

Iran had promised on Monday not to broadcast additional images of the British captives, but on Tuesday released photographs of several of them, looking relaxed and smiling, through the state news agency.

Some of the British captives, possibly under duress, have admitted to trespassing, and it appears that Iran has made such an admission a condition of their release.

Iran had demanded an admission of guilt from Britain and an apology, but Ahmadinejad appeared to have dropped that demand on Wednesday.

The Iranian president said Wednesday that he asks that Blair not put the captive sailors and marines on trial for admitting in the videotaped statements that they had trespassed in Iranian waters.

Other countries "must recognize that Iran will protect its right and its land and as it did in the past it will in the future," Ahmadinejad said. "We are sorry that the British troops remain in Iraq and their sailors are being arrested in Iran. We are sorry of this event."

He also questioned why one of the sailors was a mother. "Why is it that the most difficult missions, naval inspections, be given to a mother, who is carrying out a mission thousands of miles away from her child?" he said.

While remarks from Iran seemed softer in recent days, throughout the dispute its statements veered between conciliatory and angry, and it was hard to get a clear sense of what the government was thinking - or indeed whether the government was speaking with one voice.

Ahmadinejad's news conference on Wednesday came after he had postponed one on Tuesday.

In Washington, President Bush had described the Iranian seizure of British military personnel as "indefensible" and said that he, too, hoped to see the situation resolved peacefully. But he said Britain should not bargain for the captives' release.

"We are in close consultation with the British government," he said at a news conference at the White House. "I also strongly support the prime minister's declaration there should be no quid pro quos when it comes to the hostages."