U.K. Navy Investigates Report Iran Seizes Its Boats (Update4) [View All]

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June 21 (Bloomberg) -- The U.K.'s Royal Navy, which is investigating a report Iran seized three of its boats, said it's unable to make contact with three patrol vessels and their eight crew in the Shatt al-Arab waterway Iraq shares with Iran.

``We've tried to make radio contact with them but can't, which is not unusual here given the state of communications,'' Squadron Leader Spike Wilson, a spokesman for the U.K. military in southern Iraq, said by telephone from Basra. Wilson said the patrols are not ``overdue,'' without giving more details.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza said Iranian naval guards ``acting under their legal duty, seized the boats and detained their occupants'' after they strayed into Iranian waters, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. An investigation is under way, he said, according to the news agency.

The seizure in the long-disputed waterway, a cause of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, may worsen relations between Iran and the U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq, which is battling local and foreign insurgents who are waging a campaign to undermine security and reconstruction efforts. The U.S. says Iran is helping the insurgency.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, asked this afternoon about the alleged seizure, said that while ``there seems to be some substance to the reports,'' he didn't have ``any solid confirmation.'' Officials at the U.K. Embassy in Washington and the Iranian delegation to the United Nations couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
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