TEHRAN, March 31: London has mishandled the aftermath of the detention of British naval personnel in the Gulf, Iran’s president said on Saturday after Britain expressed concern at Iranian ‘sabre-rattling’.

Tehran’s ambassador to Moscow said the 15 Britons captured eight days ago could face punishment if found guilty of illegally entering Iran’s territorial waters. Britain insists the sailors were seized in Iraqi waters.

Suggesting the diplomatic standoff was not near a solution, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad underlined Iranian displeasure that Britain had turned to the Security Council and the European Union for support over the detentions.

“After the arrest of these people, the British government, instead of apologising and expressing regret, over the action taken, started to claim that we are in their debt and shouted in different international councils,” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by state radio.

“But this is not the legal and logical way for this issue,” he said in a speech to a rally in Khuzestan, a province on theIraqi border area where the Britons were seized.

After an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Bremen, northern Germany, Britain's Margaret Beckett said she was worried by the Moscow ambassador’s words.

“Obviously, I am concerned. It is not the first person to have made sabre-rattling noises,” she told reporters.

“The message I want to send is I think everyone regrets that this position has arisen. What we want is a way out of it.”

Ms Beckett said Britain had sent Iran a written reply to its diplomatic note on the detention of the sailors and had so far received no response.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Iran was ‘waiting for the British government to correct its behaviour’.—Reuters