Britain is ready to fly a delegation to Iran at short notice as part of an attempt to secure the release of the captive British naval crew, but yesterday evening it was still waiting for a green light from Tehran for talks to begin. The delegation, probably consisting of naval officers, legal experts and diplomats, would not formally negotiate the release of the 15 sailors and marines seized by Iran, British officials insisted, but would try to produce a face-saving way out of the crisis for both sides by discussing how to avoid another incident in the northern Gulf."The next 48 hours will be fairly critical," Tony Blair said yesterday as Downing Street braced itself for a news conference today by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has hitherto had little to say about the crisis. "If they want to resolve this in a diplomatic way, the door is open," the prime minister said. But if the negotiations stalled, Britain would "take an increasingly tougher position".
Speaking later, the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, made clear that Britain was not considering the use of force. The prime minister "is not talking, or intending to imply, anything about military action," she said. "We are not seeking confrontation. We are seeking to pursue this through diplomatic channels." Mrs Beckett said that, 12 days into the hostage crisis, British diplomats had still not been given access to the captive naval crew, and the Foreign Office had still had no "formal response" to a note sent to Tehran on Friday, proposing the dispatch of the expert delegation for confidence-building talks.
There have been almost daily contacts between the Iranian ambassador in London, Rasoul Movahedian, and David Triesman, a Foreign Office minister; they were due to hold their eighth meeting of the crisis last night. The British ambassador in Tehran, Geoffrey Adams, has also been meeting officials in the Iranian foreign ministry. But those contacts have largely produced platitudes, British sources say. They believe that Iranian officials may be unwilling to commit themselves until President Ahmadinejad has spoken.