Browne faces down calls to quit

Last Modified: 16 Apr 2007
By: Gary Gibbon

The Defence Secretary Des Browne has said inquiries into how 15 British navy personnel were captured by Iranian armed forces would take more time.

But enough was known about the decision here to let the returning naval personnel sell their stories to the newspapers to know that it was a mistake.

The Conservatives said they wanted to hear the Defence Secretary say he personally was sorry and - after a while - that's what he did.

The Defence Secretary said a former commander of UK amphibious task forces -would lead an inquiry into how British personnel were captured by Iranians.

Mr Browne said he could not give any more details now about why it took 24 minutes for a support helicopter to go looking for the captured patrol vessels after they'd lost contact with HMS Cornwall. The Conservatives said the embarrassment of the whole saga meant the Defence Secretary should go.

Des Browne said he was setting up a separate inquiry into how the humiliation in the Gulf was followed by a humiliation at home - as navy personnel sold their stories to the newspapers, with accounts of "crying their eyes out" and Iranian guards calling one of them Mr Bean.

One former Foreign Secretary attacked the captured sailors for their public admissions of guilt on Iranian television ...

This was the moment the Conservatives had hoped they'd bring the Iranian saga to the Defence Secretary's doorstep back in Westminster.

They wanted to pin the blame for what they call a national humiliation in Iran and the shambles of the newspaper stories on Mr Browne.

Ministry of Defence sources confirmed that each of the individual heads of the armed forces has communicated their personal support to Mr Browne.

That and Mr Browne's full apology in the Commons means the boat saga did not claim a political victim today.