Document reveals border doubt

Last Modified: 17 Apr 2008
By: Jonathan Rugman

A Ministry of Defence document shows a Navy patrol seized by Iranian forces last year was in disputed waters.

At the time, the Government strenuously insisted the 15 British sailors and marines, who were held for two weeks, had been inside Iraqi territorial waters.

But a memo released under the Freedom of Information act makes clear they were actually in disputed waters.

The document says a demarcating line had been drawn up by the Americans but no one told the Iranians where it was.

MPs are calling it a national embarassment.

From the beginning, the MoD insisted the incident took place in Iraqi terrtiorial waters and that the Iranians had crossed the border.

But the Minstry has never revealed the precise location of the incident and still refuses to do so.

What is more, the internal MoD report to the Chief of the Defence Staff first released to The Times newspaper and now to us, suggests that location was in dispute.

The report says Royal Navy patrols used a notional boundary line created by the Americans and never told the Iranians what this boundary was.

The reports sread: "While it may be assumed that the Iranians must be aware of some form of operational boundary, the exact coordinates of the Op Line have not been pubished to Iran."

None of this excuses Iran's seizure of British sailors in the Gulf but MoD told Channel 4 News during the incident that we were wrong to report, as we did, that the incident took place in disputed territory beyond the mouth of the Shatt Al Arab waterway.