4 April 2007
Tony Blair has spoken about the release of the UK service personnel in Iran.
He said he was glad they’d been released and knew that their families would be “profoundly relieved” to hear the news.
Speaking alongside Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett outside Number 10, the PM stressed that the UK had adopted a “firm, calm, measured” approach throughout the situation, “not negotiating but not confronting”.
He also had a message for the Iranian people.
“The disagreements we have with your government we wish to resolve peacefully through dialogue.”
His comments cams after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that the personnel would be freed immediately as a “gift to the British people”.
The 15 Britons were seized while conducting a routine early morning anti-smuggling check on a merchant vessel in the Gulf on March 23.
Iran had previously claimed that each member of the group had confessed to illegally entering Iranian waters.
But the UK Government insisted the sailors and Royal Marines were in Iraqi waters when Iranian gunboats seized them.
Read the PM’s statement in full
I am glad that our 15 service personnel have been released. I know their release will come as a profound relief, not just to them but to their families that have endured such distress and anxiety over these past 12 days.
Throughout we have taken a measured approach, firm but calm, not negotiating, but not confronting either. I would like to thank our allies in Europe, our allies in the United Nations Security Council, for their support and also our friends and allies in the region who played their part. We are grateful to all of them as we are to the officials in the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence and here in Downing Street for the work that they have done.
And to the Iranian people I would simply say this, we bear you no ill will. On the contrary, we respect Iran as an ancient civilisation, as a nation with a proud and dignified history and the disagreements that we have with your government we wish to resolve peacefully, through dialogue. I hope, as I have always hoped, that in the future we are able to do so.
That is all that I have got to say for this evening. Thank you very much indeed.
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