Blair Toughens Stance On Seized Britons

LONDON, March 27 — As tensions escalate between Iran and the West, Prime Minster Tony Blair warned today that Britains campaign to free 15 captured British naval personnel would move into a different phase if they were not released.

Just days after the United Nations Security Council voted for tougher sanctions against Iran in the separate dispute over its nuclear ambitions, Mr. Blairs remarks seemed intended to ratchet up pressure on Teheran and counter criticism at home that his government has responded timidly to the crisis. The eight British sailors and seven marines captured by Iran include one woman identified today as Faye Turney, 26.

Mr. Blair told the morning television station GMTV today that Britain was trying to make the Iranian government understand these people have to be released and that there is absolutely no justification for holding them.

I hope we manage to get them to realize they have to release them, Mr. Blair said. If not, then this will move into a different phase, but at the moment what were trying to do is make sure that that diplomatic initiative works.

Officials in Mr. Blairs office and at the British Foreign Office insisted that the prime minister was referring specifically to a tougher diplomatic posture, not to military or other more confrontational means — even as United States warships maneuver in the Persian Gulf for their biggest naval exercises there since the invasion of Iraq four years ago.

To underscore the British point, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, who is visiting Turkey, a neighbor of Iran, telephoned her counterpart in Teheran today and spoke in very robust terms reiterating the U.K.s concern about the continued detention of our personnel, a Foreign Office spokesman in London said, speaking in return for customary anonymity.

But Iran renewed its insistence today that the Britons had entered Iranian waters illegally and would be investigated before any consular access was permitted.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, told the official IRNA news agency that issues surrounding the captured Britons would be resolved under the aegis of restraint and respect for rules and regulations.

Media-run propaganda and indiscreet and sometimes provocative remarks would not resolve the issue of violation by British forces of Irans territorial waters, he said. The British sailors have illegally strayed into Irans territorial waters and they are being accorded due process of law.

He said Iranian interrogators were treating the 15 Britons in a humane, Islamic and respectful manner. But he insisted that the British Embassy and its consular section would be able to contact the sailors only after the preliminary investigations are complete.

The sailors and marines were captured five days ago in two boatloads after they inspected a cargo vessel for contraband in disputed waters. Britain insists that the military personnel were in Iraqi waters under the authority of the United Nations. But Iran says it is investigating whether to charge the 15 Britons with entering Iranian waters illegally.

We have been relatively polite in what we have said, but we are getting increasingly impatient with the lack of cooperation from Iran, the Foreign Office spokesman said.

He and Mr. Blairs spokesman both said that one way of increasing pressure on Teheran would be to publicize such evidence as coordinates from satellite navigation devices, establishing the whereabouts of the British personnel at the time Iranian vessels surrounded them at gunpoint last Friday. That could mean that Britain would accuse Iran of entering Iraqs territorial waters unlawfully.

In her conversation with the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, Mrs. Beckett demanded the safe and speedy return of the British personnel and immediate consular access so that Britain could see for itself that its citizens were in good health, as Iran insists they are, the Foreign Office spokesman said. But Britain still does not know where the group is being held, he said.

To reinforce the foreign secretarys words, the British ambassador in Teheran, Geoffrey Adams, made the same points as Mrs. Beckett at a meeting with officials at the Iranian Foreign Ministry, the spokesman said.

The British government seems to be feeling increasingly uneasy at the way the crisis is unfolding compared to a similar episode in 2004 when Iran captured eight British military personnel and released them after three nights during which they were subjected to blindfolding and mock executions.

Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Cairo.

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