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Ahmadinejad says UK sailors pardoned, to be freed

TEHRAN -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wednesday announced that 15 British sailors captured more than two weeks ago had been pardoned and would be freed imminently.

"While insisting on our rights, these 15 sailors have been pardoned and we offer their freedom to the British people," Ahmadinejad said in a dramatic announcement at a news conference in Tehran.

He said that they would be freed after the press conference and taken straight to the airport.

His declaration came even after the hardline president lashed out at Britain over its handling of the 13-day crisis and decorated a Revolutionary Guards commander who had seized the Britons
Earlier, Iran had applauded a "change of tone" from Britain after talks with a top advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair, raising hopes of a solution to the crisis that has further damaged ties between Tehran and the West already frayed by the nuclear standoff.

"London's action in changing its propaganda tone regarding the issue of the arrest of the British sailors in our territorial waters is appropriate," Iran's parliament speaker Gholam Ali Hadad Adel had said. "The effective measures taken by the British in the past few days make the tone of their rhetoric more logical and instead of controversy they are inclined toward negotiations," he added. "This is a more appropriate action."

His comments came after Iran's top security official Ali Larijani held talks with Blair's chief foreign policy advisor Sir Nigel Sheinwald late Tuesday.

Iran had insisted that the key to resolving the crisis was an admission from Britain that the sailors and marines did intrude into Iranian territorial waters when they were seized March 23.

"The British should confess that they made a mistake and they should no longer commit such moves," Hadad Adel had said.

Britain maintains that the group was carrying out routine anti-smuggling operations in Iraqi waters but Iran says that the sailors' Global Positioning System (GPS) devices show that they intruded on Iranian waters.

The latest dramatic developments coincided with the release in Baghdad of an Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Iraq in early February. Iran had blamed US forces in the country for the abduction.

Iranian state media also said that five Iranian officials captured by US forces in northern Iraq in January and accused of seeking to stir trouble were expected to receive their first visit by an Iranian diplomat.

Asked if the five Iranians should be freed to favor a possible release of the Britons, US President George W. Bush insisted there should be no "quid pro quos."

New still images were released Tuesday of the detained sailors and marines, showing them "relaxing" in tracksuits and playing chess, a change from the previous string of video "confessions."

The crisis has come at a perilous time for Iran's relations with the West, with the United States refusing to rule out military action over the Iranian nuclear program and the United Nations imposing tough new sanctions.

In a separate affair, local officials denied US reports that a missing former US FBI agency had disappeared while on a private visit to Iran's southern resort island of Kish, state media reported.

Source: http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070404-092618-5960r