January 19, 2006	Thursday	Zilhaj 18, 1426

BAGHDAD, Jan 18: The Iranian envoy in Baghdad said on Wednesday Iraqi vessels had encroached into Iranian waters and Tehran was investigating Iraqi accusations that Iran had kidnapped nine members of a coastguard patrol after a clash in the incident.

“The Iranian coastguard stopped an Iraqi vessel and two ships escorting it. Iran is investigating the matter and some answers should emerge in a few hours,” Hasan Kazemi-Qomi said.

Iranian officials on Tuesday denied the incident, which Iraqi officials said took place on Saturday or Sunday.

The affair is a test of the new warmth in relations between Baghdad and Tehran since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

An Iraqi government statement said the incident was raised on Tuesday in a meeting between Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari and Kazemi-Qomi.

It said Mr Zebari, who handed Mr Kazemi-Qomi a diplomatic memorandum on the incident, said he hoped the issue could be resolved in a brotherly spirit.

Mr Kazemi-Qomi said an Iraqi vessel escorted by two other boats was on its way back to the Gulf after unloading cargo in an Iraqi port and was stopped by the Iranian coastguard after crossing into Iranian waters.

He declined to say whether Iran was holding nine Iraqi coastguards. “These questions will be answered in a few hours. An investigation is underway,” he said.

CLASH: Mohammed al Waili, the governor of Basra, said on Tuesday that the Iraqi coastguards had boarded an Iranian-skippered ship suspected of smuggling oil in Iraqi waters when they were overpowered by an Iranian patrol.

He accused the Iranians of ‘martyring’ one Iraqi and ‘kidnapping’ eight, but later said he had been unable to confirm the death. “He has serious injuries and there are reports that he has died, but I have not been able to verify that,” he told Al Arabiya television.

Mr Kazemi-Qomi, who was called in by Mr Zebari on Tuesday to discuss the release of the men, denied that there had been clashes on their tidal frontier.

“There were no clashes. Relations between the Iranian and Iraqi coastguards are excellent,” he said.

Lt Col Ziyad Majid Wali, a coastguard commander in the Iraqi port of Abu Flous, said the problem began when a patrol approached the ship, the Nour 1, suspecting it of smuggling oil near Abadan, on the Iranian side of the waterway.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani stepped in to cool tempers on Tuesday, conceding the nine Iraqis might have strayed across the border in the shifting tidal shoals of the Shatt al Arab and calling their arrest a ‘mistake’ that would soon be sorted out.

Iraq and Iran have a long history of disputes along the waterway. Iran briefly seized three British naval patrol boats in the same area in June 2004, at a time when US-led occupation forces were responsible for policing the border. —Reuters