Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press  --  Arab News

TEHRAN, 23 June 2004 — Iran said yesterday it could release eight British sailors accused of illegally entering Iran’s territorial waters depending on the interrogations, stepping back from earlier statements that they would be prosecuted.

Two of the sailors were seen on state-run television last night apologizing for mistakenly entering Iran’s territorial waters.

The men, reading from a prepared text, were shown standing next to a river. The broadcast, on Arabic language Al-Alam television, also showed the three British military patrol boats and weapons it said had been confiscated from the sailors.

“If the outcome of the interrogations of the British military men shows that they had no bad intention, they will be released soon,” said Gen. Ali Reza Afshar, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

The comments by Afshar, an Iranian Armed Forces spokesman, suggested a softening of Iran’s position on the fate of the eight sailors, who were detained Monday in the Shatt Al-Arab as they were delivering a patrol boat for the new Iraqi Riverine Patrol Service. The Shatt Al-Arab, known as the Arvand River in Iran, runs along the Iran-Iraq border. Earlier yesterday, Al-Alam TV said the sailors would be prosecuted “for illegally entering Iranian territorial waters.”

“The vessels were 1,000 meters inside Iranian territorial waters. The crew have also confessed to having entered Iranian waters,” the broadcast said. It added the sailors were carrying maps and weapons.

“I do apologize for entering Iranian territorial waters,” one of the men said in the television appearance.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw phoned his Iranian counterpart Kamal Kharrazi to ask for the release of the sailors, who were earlier shown on Iranian television blindfolded and seated cross-legged on the ground. A Foreign Office official said: “We are very concerned by the (TV) pictures and we are raising it with the Iranians at the appropriate level.”

The Foreign Office said it had summoned Iranian Ambassador Morteza Sarmadi to demand an explanation of why the sailors were arrested on a “routine mission” in the Shatt Al-Arab waterway.

The waterway, Iraq’s main link with the Gulf, has long been a source of tension between the neighbors. The 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war broke out after then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein claimed the entire waterway.

The British Defense Ministry said the sailors may have inadvertently strayed into Iranian waters.

“There is obviously some likelihood that they did find themselves on the wrong side of a very much historically disputed border,” said a Defense Ministry spokesman, adding that weather had been bad on Monday. He spoke on customary condition of anonymity.

The Defense Ministry said the personnel were from the Royal Navy training team based in southern Iraq. They were delivering a boat from Umm Qasr to Basra, Iraq.

In other state TV broadcasts yesterday, the sailors were shown sitting silently on chairs and a sofa. Three of them were in British military uniform; five others wore military trousers and civilian T-shirts.

The detentions follow a fresh strain in London-Tehran ties after Britain helped draft a resolution rebuking Iran for past nuclear cover-ups at last week’s meeting of the IAEA.