Posted on 04/04/2007 8:58:57 PM PDT by Sleeping Beauty
TEHRAN: Iran’s state media reported Wednesday that an Iranian envoy will be allowed to meet five Iranians detained by US forces in northern Iraq since January - a possible sign of further progress toward ending a British-Iranian standoff.
The report appeared as Britain and Iran were entering a sensitive phase in the efforts to free 15 British sailors and marines captured by the Iranians last month in disputed waters of the Persian Gulf. A separate Iranian diplomat seized two months ago by uniformed gunmen in Iraq was released and returned Tuesday to Tehran. Iran had blamed the US for the abduction, a charge American authorities denied.
The detention of the five other Iranians occurred in January in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish self-governing region in northern Iraq. Iraqi Kurds, like the country’s Shiites, maintain close ties with Shiite-dominated Iran, despite their warm relationship with the US - and they had been upset over the arrests in their own capital.
Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, himself a Kurd, told The Associated Press that the case of the five detained Iranians had no connection with that of the British sailors and marines. However, the moves on that case and the release of the Iranian diplomat raised the possibility that a possible swap was in the works.
Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency said an Iranian envoy would be allowed to meet with the five detained Iranians but gave no further details.
US troops detained the five Iranians on Jan 11, accusing them of links to an Iranian Revolutionary Guard network that was supplying money and weapons to insurgents in Iraq. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said President George W Bush had approved the strategy of raiding Iranian targets in Iraq as part of efforts to confront the government in Tehran.
Iran denounced the raid and insisted that the five were diplomats who were engaged exclusively in consular work. The Iraqi government said they were arrested at an office that was supposed to become an Iranian consulate.
The British newspaper The Independent reported this week that the Irbil raid had escalated tensions between the US and Iran and may have set the stage for the March 23 seizing of the British naval personnel.
In a commentary, the Iranian news agency said the movement on the Iranian prisoner issue was due in part to “the new American political and military appointments in Iraq.”
Meanwhile, the US military confirmed on Wednesday receiving an “informal” request for an Iranian consular official to visit five Iranians who have been held in Iraq by US forces since January.
“An informal request has come in for a consular visit and it is being assessed at this time,” US military spokesman Major General William Caldwell told journalists in Baghdad.
iran disallows britain to visit captured sailors..
gee, no hypocrisy here.......
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