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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Snatch Brits 'Fit And Well'

2007-03-26

Fifteen British service personnel arrested by Iran are "fit and well", the Foreign Office has said. Iran's foreign ministry gave the assurance to British ambassador Geoffrey Adams. It came during a "business-like" hour-long meeting between the two this morning. "The foreign ministry assured us that the group were fit and well and in Iran, but gave no further details at this stage," a Foreign Office spokesman said. But Iran warned the group were being "interrogated" and the individuals could be charged with spying. "The case of the Britons who violated Iranian territorial waters is following the due legal process and they must answer for their violation," deputy foreign minister Mehdi Mostafavi said. "The British sailors are currently being interrogated and must clarify whether they entered Iranian waters deliberately or by mistake. "When it becomes clear, a decision will be made." Mr Mostafavi added that Iran was not aiming to swap the individuals for five Iranians arrested in northern Iraq by the US. The 15 Britons were arrested by Iranian soldiers on Friday as they inspected a dhow they suspected was involved in smuggling cars. Iran said the personnel were in Iranian waters. That is denied by Britain who says the group were in Iraqi waters. Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari spoke to his Iranian counterpart on Monday morning by phone and called for the group to be released. The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, said they should be "freed immediately". Tony Blair warned Tehran it was a "fundamental" issue for the UK and insisted they had not strayed into Iranian waters. Sources told Sky News that Iran's ambassador to Britain may be called to see Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett for a third time. Foreign Office minister Lord Triesman told Sky News Britain wanted to know where the men were being held amid reports they had been taken to Tehran. Sky's Foreign Affairs Editor, Tim Marshall, said Iran would dictate the pace of events. "It appears Iran is holding all the cards whilst they decide which one to play," Marshall said. "If they want to escalate the situation they will charge them with espionage. "If having made their point they want to de-escalate, they will let them go with a warning. "The point is they are in control."

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Blair: Sailors Weren't in Iranian Waters

2007-03-25

BERLIN (AP) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Sunday that the 15 British sailors and marines captured by Iran were not in Iranian waters and warned that Britain viewed their fate as a "fundamental" issue. The group was seized at gunpoint on Friday, and the Foreign Office in London said British officials do not know where Iran is holding them. "It is simply not true that they went into Iranian territorial waters," Blair said at a news conference in Berlin, calling the situation "very serious." "I want to get it resolved in as easy and diplomatic a way as possible," he said, but added he hoped the Iranians "understood how fundamental an issue this is for the British government." Blair's comment, at celebrations for the 50th birthday of the European Union, follows British and European Union demands for Iran to release the 15, who were seized at gunpoint in disputed waters between Iran and Iraq on Friday. Britain and the United States have said the sailors had just completed a search of a civilian vessel in the Iraqi part of the Shatt al Arab waterway when they were intercepted by the Iranian navy. Iran, however, says they illegally entered Iranian waters. Iranian state television reported that its Foreign Ministry called in British Ambassador Geoffrey Adams, "to protest the illegal entry." Britain disputed the Iranian account, saying the meeting was called at the ambassador's request. The capture and detention of the British service personnel risks escalating an already fraught relationship between Iran and the West. The U.N. Security Council of Saturday agreed to moderately tougher sanctions against Iran for its refusal to meet U.N. demands that it halt uranium enrichment. Many in the West fear Tehran's nuclear program is not for power generation but for arms making, a claim Iran denies. The approved sanctions included ban on Iranian arms exports and freezing the assets of 28 additional people and organizations involved in Iran's nuclear and missile programs. About a third of those are linked to the Revolutionary Guard, an elite corps whose navy seized the British sailors and marines. The British Foreign Office said requests for access to the 15 Britons had been denied and officials did not know where they were being held. Iran's Gen. Ali Reza Afshar said Saturday that the seized Britons were taken to Tehran for questioning where they "confessed" to illegally entering Iranian waters. Lord Triesman, a Foreign Office undersecretary who had held talks with Iran's ambassador on Saturday, told Sky News the issue of whether the sailors had strayed into Iranian waters was a technical one. "I've been very clear throughout that the British forces do not ever intentionally enter into Iranian waters," he said. "There's no reason for them to do so, we don't intend to do so and I think people should accept there's good faith in those assertions." "We believe there's good strong evidence that they were in Iraqi water at the time," Triesman said. "That's a technical issue and I think it could be resolved as a technical issue." French President Jacques Chirac expressed support for Britain's position: "It appears clear that these soldiers were not in the Iranian zone at the time." Peter Hain, Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary, described Tehran's refusal to return the sailors as a dangerous development. "It's essential that this occurs and it's essential not just for the well-being of our soldiers but also for stability in the region," he said.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Iran ‘to try Britons for espionage’

2007-03-25

(Times) FIFTEEN British sailors and marines arrested by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Iraq may be charged with spying. A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before a court and indicted. Referring to them as “insurgents”, the site concluded: “If it is proven that they deliberately entered Iranian territory, they will be charged with espionage. If that is proven, they can expect a very serious penalty since according to Iranian law, espionage is one of the most serious offences.” The warning followed claims by Iranian officials that the British navy personnel had been taken to Tehran, the capital, to explain their “aggressive action” in entering Iranian waters. British officials insist the servicemen were in Iraqi waters when they were held. Related Links * Iran raises the hostage stakes * Keep up the pressure * Hostage fears over servicemen seized by Iran The penalty for espionage in Iran is death. However, similar accusations of spying were made when eight British servicemen were detained in the same area in 2004. They were paraded blindfolded on television but did not appear in court and were freed after three nights in detention. Iranian student groups called yesterday for the 15 detainees to be held until US forces released five Revolutionary Guards captured in Iraq earlier this year. Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a Saudi-owned newspaper based in London, quoted an Iranian military source as saying that the aim was to trade the Royal Marines and sailors for these Guards. The claim was backed by other sources in Tehran. “As soon as the corps’s five members are released, the Britons can go home,” said one source close to the Guards. He said the tactic had been approved by Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who warned last week that Tehran would take “illegal actions” if necessary to maintain its right to develop a nuclear programme. Iran denounced a tightening of sanctions which the United Nations security council was expected to agree last night in protest at Tehran’s insistence on enriching uranium that could be used for nuclear weapons. Lord Triesman, the Foreign Office minister, met the Iranian ambassador in London yesterday to demand that consular staff be allowed access to the Britons, one of whom is a woman. His intervention came as a senior Iranian general alleged that the Britons had confessed under interrogation to “aggression into Iran’s waters”. Intelligence sources said any advance order for the arrests was likely to have come from Major-General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards. Subhi Sadek, the Guards’ weekly newspaper, warned last weekend that the force had “the ability to capture a bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks”. Safavi is known to be furious about the recent defections to the West of three senior Guards officers, including a general, and the effect of UN sanctions on his own finances. A senior Iraqi officer appeared to back Tehran’s claim that the British had entered Iranian waters. “We were informed by Iraqi fishermen after they had returned from sea that there were British gunboats in an area that is out of Iraqi control,” said Brigadier-General Hakim Jassim, who is in charge of Iraq’s territorial waters. “We don’t know why they were there.” Admiral Sir Alan West, the former head of the Royal Navy, dismissed suggestions that the British boats might have been in Iranian waters. West, who was first sea lord when the previous arrests took place in June 2004, said satellite tracking systems had shown then that the Iranians were lying and the same was certain to be true now.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Blair convenes Cobra team as crisis in Iran escalates

2007-03-25

A little more information... THE official notification, delivered in secure calls yesterday morning to senior Whitehall figures, was the latest dramatic behind-the-scenes move to get to grips with a crisis that is now engulfing the government. After a day of shadow-boxing with a notoriously slippery regime, Tony Blair is set to up the ante: the plight of the Shatt al-Arab 15 is officially a crisis and he will need the Cobra team to handle it. The clutch of VIPs will gather in an operations room several floors below Downing Street as early as this afternoon to plot an escape from a military spat that now threatens to become an international incident. The decision came just 24 hours after the crew of HMS Cornwall had been caught in the confusion of direct confrontation with Iranian vessels in the searing heat of the Gulf. As the crew members were surrounded in their two rubber dinghies, the Cornwall's commander, Commodore Nick Lambert, frantically radioed back to his own top brass for instructions. The response to the inquiry, which had been immediately patched through to Ministry of Defence headquarters in Whitehall, was to hold fire. The order to show restraint has been observed throughout the forces and the British government in the 48 hours since, but it is unclear how long both sides will be able to maintain control. Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett's first response to the gathering crisis on Friday was to keep to diplomatic conventions. After a hurried phone call to Blair, she immediately summoned Iran's ambassador, Rasoul Movahedian, to her office to explain their behaviour. After a meeting described by officials as "brisk but polite", Beckett emerged to stress that she was "extremely disturbed" by events. It was an understated description of the deep concern now gripping the government. Not only was Blair's administration alarmed at the risk to the 15 military personnel, which included at least one woman, but it was in no doubt over Tehran's ability to use their plight to make a wider point. During a flurry of diplomatic activity in the hours after the snatch, the Iranians' rhetoric repeatedly elevated their action, and the alleged motives of the British, to a multinational affair. It was the eve of a second UN Security Council resolution imposing sanctions over Iran's refusal to halt its programme to enrich uranium. The Shatt al-Arab 15 were, from the start, pawns in a perilous international game. "It looks like too much of a coincidence," a senior Foreign Office insider confirmed. The response was a no- nonsense demand for Iran to relent - and Britain freely used the international community to back up its case. Beckett dispatched the UK chargé d'affaires, Kate Smith, to confront the government in Tehran, armed with the insistence that the British sailors had been in Iraqi waters. In the meantime, Blair made a personal call to European allies, including EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, to secure a public denunciation of the Iranians' actions. "It was impressed on everyone how important it was to raise the diplomatic temperature, rather than keep a low profile and let them make a song and dance of the situation," one defence official said. "There is nothing to be gained in provoking a confrontation, because that would be playing into their hands. But neither should we let them have it all their way. We tried that before and we're still trying to get our kit back." The smaller-scale precedent, the taking of six British marines and two sailors on the same waterway in June 2004, was a painful lesson. The personnel were only returned after they had been paraded blindfold on Iranian television and admitted entering Iranian waters illegally. Three years on, the government is still pressing Iran for the return of its boats and kit, including valuable radar equipment. The degree of concern felt across Whitehall was demonstrated yesterday, when Movahedian was called back to the Foreign Office, this time to see Beckett's minister, Lord Triesman. The British were clearly attempting to warn off Tehran before it could begin to use the servicemen and women as a significant propaganda tool. It was, however, a race against time - and through it all, the diplomats and the politicians were acutely aware that Tehran has built a foreign policy on disregarding diplomatic niceties. Yeah, we've noticed that, too...

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Iran ‘to try Britons for espionage’

2007-03-25

FIFTEEN British sailors and marines arrested by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards off the coast of Iraq may be charged with spying. A website run by associates of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, reported last night that the Britons would be put before a court and indicted. Referring to them as “insurgents”, the site concluded: “If it is proven that they deliberately entered Iranian territory, they will be charged with espionage. If that is proven, they can expect a very serious penalty since according to Iranian law, espionage is one of the most serious offences.” “If it is proven that they deliberately entered Iranian territory, they will be charged with espionage. If that is proven, they can expect a very serious penalty since according to Iranian law, espionage is one of the most serious offences.” The warning followed claims by Iranian officials that the British navy personnel had been taken to Tehran, the capital, to explain their “aggressive action” in entering Iranian waters. British officials insist the servicemen were in Iraqi waters when they were held. The penalty for espionage in Iran is death. However, similar accusations of spying were made when eight British servicemen were detained in the same area in 2004. They were paraded blindfolded on television but did not appear in court and were freed after three nights in detention. Iranian student groups called yesterday for the 15 detainees to be held until US forces released five Revolutionary Guards captured in Iraq earlier this year. Iranian student groups called yesterday for the 15 detainees to be held until US forces released five Revolutionary Guards captured in Iraq earlier this year. Al-Sharq al-Awsat, a Saudi-owned newspaper based in London, quoted an Iranian military source as saying that the aim was to trade the Royal Marines and sailors for these Guards. The claim was backed by other sources in Tehran. “As soon as the corps’s five members are released, the Britons can go home,” said one source close to the Guards. He said the tactic had been approved by Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, who warned last week that Tehran would take “illegal actions” if necessary to maintain its right to develop a nuclear programme. Iran denounced a tightening of sanctions which the United Nations security council was expected to agree last night in protest at Tehran’s insistence on enriching uranium that could be used for nuclear weapons. Lord Triesman, the Foreign Office minister, met the Iranian ambassador in London yesterday to demand that consular staff be allowed access to the Britons, one of whom is a woman. His intervention came as a senior Iranian general alleged that the Britons had confessed under interrogation to “aggression into Iran’s waters”. Intelligence sources said any advance order for the arrests was likely to have come from Major-General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards. Subhi Sadek, the Guards’ weekly newspaper, warned last weekend that the force had “the ability to capture a bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks”. Safavi is known to be furious about the recent defections to the West of three senior Guards officers, including a general, and the effect of UN sanctions on his own finances. Safavi is known to be furious about the recent defections to the West of three senior Guards officers, including a general, and the effect of UN sanctions on his own finances. A senior Iraqi officer appeared to back Tehran’s claim that the British had entered Iranian waters. “We were informed by Iraqi fishermen after they had returned from sea that there were British gunboats in an area that is out of Iraqi control,” said Brigadier-General Hakim Jassim, who is in charge of Iraq’s territorial waters. “We don’t know why they were there.” Admiral Sir Alan West, the former head of the Royal Navy, dismissed suggestions that the British boats might have been in Iranian waters. West, who was first sea lord when the previous arrests took place in June 2004, said satellite tracking systems had shown then that the Iranians were lying and the same was certain to be true now.

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Britain

alG Seethes: UK refuses to back cluster bomb ban

2006-10-19

UK refuses to back cluster bomb ban as extent of use in Lebanon revealed · Global ban also opposed by China, US and Russia · Unexploded devices still killing three people a day Proof? Hey - no DU stats? Slackers. Britain has joined the US, China and Russia to block a proposed ban on cluster bombs in the wake of extensive use of the weapons during the war in Lebanon. A group of countries, led by Sweden, is urging a worldwide ban on cluster bombs at arms talks in Geneva. Each bomb contains hundreds of small "bomblets", many of which fail to explode until picked up by inquisitive children or stepped on by civilians. Israeli forces dropped an estimated 1m cluster bomblets in southern Lebanon this summer - 90% of which were dropped in the last three days of the conflict, a new report from Landmine Action said yesterday. The weapons have left a trail of unexploded munitions that is killing between three and four civilians each day and impeding relief work. In just one month, the UN identified more than 500 areas hit by cluster bombs, the report said. Richard Moyes, policy and research manager of Landmine Action, which supports the proposed ban, said Britain's refusal to back a ban was "incredible". "Unfortunately, it is not surprising because the UK has been one of the biggest users of the munitions, in Kosovo and in Iraq," he added. Mr Moyes said he did not want to speculate on why Israel had dropped so many cluster bombs in the last days of the war in Lebanon that ended in August. One theory was that Israel hoped it would make it more difficult for Hizbullah to fire its rockets from southern Lebanon. Aid agencies and human rights groups, such as Landmine Action, have repeatedly called for an international ban on the use of cluster weapons Most Israeli cluster strikes hit built-up areas. Landmine Action says when the research for its report was undertaken a month after the ceasefire, water and power supplies had been blocked, and schools, roads, houses, and gardens were still littered with unexploded devices. The report says: "In many affected areas, farmers have not been able to safely harvest what was left of this summer's tobacco, wheat, and fruit; late-yielding crops such as olives will remain too dangerous to harvest by November and winter crops will be lost because farmers will be unable to plough their grains and vegetables." Simon Conway, the director of Landmine Action, said: "Every day women and children are killed or injured as they sift through the rubble of their former homes by cluster munitions that failed to go off. If they were any other kind of product, they would have been recalled." The Foreign Office confirmed that the UK is opposing the diplomatic push led by Sweden in Geneva to change the certain conventional weapons treaty. It said: "The UK believes existing humanitarian law is sufficient for the conduct of military operations, including the use of cluster munitions, and no treaty is required. The UK remains committed to improving the reliability of all munitions with the aim of achieving lower failure rates and leaving few unexploded ordnance in order to minimise the humanitarian risk." It said this had been longstanding British policy. Sweden is supported by various countries, including Austria, Mexico and New Zealand, as well as the Vatican and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Cluster bombs have been used in most conflicts since the Vietnam war. Belgium has banned them and Australia and Norway have declared a moratorium on their use. Germany has said its forces will stop using them. The Foreign Office minister, Lord Triesman, told peers in a debate this month that "cluster munitions are legitimate weapons when used in accordance with international humanitarian law". He added: "They provide a unique capability against certain dispersed and wide-area military targets, for which other munitions are not necessarily practical." He said Britain expected the Israeli government to investigate any "well-founded allegations of the misuse of munitions by their armed forces". The British embassy in Tel Aviv was pursuing the matter with the Israeli authorities, Lord Triesman said. According to the UN's mine action coordinating centre, Israeli forces fired 1,800 rocket systems, each with 12 individual rockets, into south Lebanon. The high failure rate meant that 450,000 cluster bomblets were left on the ground, according to the Liberal Democrats. Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, said: "There is now an irrefutable case for a comprehensive international ban on the use, production, and transfer of cluster munitions." Flawed weapons And flawed unsubstantiated one-sided reportage - but that's okey-dokey, cuz we're alG and we're your moral superiors. · Cluster bombs are usually dropped from medium to high altitudes and consist of dozens of bomblets in an outer casing. They have anti-armour and anti-personnel capabilities · They do not have precision guidance. With a 5% dud rate, unexploded bombs become landmines · According to Human Rights Watch, Nato aircraft dropped nearly 2,000 during the campaign in the former Yugoslavia in 1999 · They also estimate that 1,600 Kuwaiti and Iraqi civilians were killed by the estimated 1.2m duds left after the 1991 Gulf war I estimate that not one single stat reported in this article is authoritative.

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Britain

Foreign office minister regrets misinforming parliament on rendition

2006-01-25

A Foreign Office minister last night expressed regret at misinforming parliament over meetings with the United Nations on extraordinary rendition. In a written reply to a question from to Liberal Democrat Lord Oakeshott, Lord Triesman explained why he told peers that Foreign Office officials had not held talks with the UN on the alleged use of British airports for secret CIA flights, before admitting that a meeting had taken place. It has been confirmed that Martin Scheinin, the UN Human Rights Commission's special rapporteur, travelled to London for meetings with Home Office and Foreign Office officials in November last year. Lord Triesman said : "I very much regret this oversight." "Extraordinary rendition was not raised at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office meeting. But I understand it was covered at the meeting in the Home Office in which an FCO official participated. "The officials who prepared my answer to your original question apparently overlooked that fact. "The purpose of the Home Office meeting was to discuss the government's terrorism legislation and policy of deportation with assurances. Extraordinary rendition was raised briefly. "We have sought throughout to keep parliament informed of developments and will continue to do so if new information comes to light," he said. Fresh demands were made last night for a UK inquiry into so-called ghost flights after Europe's human rights watchdog claimed EU governments almost certainly knew the CIA was "outsourcing torture" by flying al Qaeda suspects through their territories, including the use of Scots airports. Dick Marty, the Swiss MP investigating rendition claims for the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, said: "The entire continent is involved. It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware of the rendition of more than a hundred persons affecting Europe." "We have no proof, of course, it's highly unlikely!" Last night Angus Robertson, the SNP's foreign affairs spokesman, called for disclosure from London and Edinburgh, saying: "This is a serious issue about our standing in the world and the UK government and Scottish Executive need to end the culture of secrecy." Nick Clegg, LibDem foreign affairs spokesman, insisted there ought to be a full government inquiry on rendition. Liberty, the civil rights group, said that if the government did not carry out an investigation, then it could be "complicit in acts of torture". Tony Blair's spokesman dismissed Mr Marty's report, saying: "From what I have heard, there seem to be no new facts." Or old facts.

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Britain

Prominent Jews in Britain targeted by Muslims and neo-Nazis

2004-02-15

Prominent Jews in Britain are being targeted in a wave of anti-Semitic harassment by far-Right and Islamic fundamentalist organisations. The home of Lord Triesman, the former general secretary of the Labour party, has been attacked by Combat 18, the neo-Nazi group. Uri Geller, the Israeli television personality, and Barbara Roche, the former Labour minister, have been the victims of graffiti and hate mail. The incidents have emerged as police prepare to release figures this week showing that Britain saw a significant rise in anti-Semitic incidents in 2003. Muslims and Nazis team up again, no big surprise there I suppose.

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