Reuters – Iraq demanded on Tuesday the release of coastguards it said were seized by Iran during a clash involving suspected oil smugglers on their tidal frontier, but Iran’s Baghdad embassy denied all knowledge of the incident.
The affair, in which Iraqi officers said one of their men was badly wounded, is a test for the new warmth in relations between Baghdad and Tehran since pro-Iranian Shi’ites took control in Iraq following the U.S. ousting of Saddam Hussein.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari was raising the issue with Iranian charge d’affaires Hasan Kazemi-Qomi at a meeting called in part to discuss the incident, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
Iraqi officials, in confusing statements, have said nine or 10 coastguards were seized on Saturday or Sunday in the Shatt al-Arab estuary between Basra and the Gulf. The tidal frontier between the two states has been long disputed.
But Kazemi-Qomi said through a spokeswoman: "The reports of this incident are untrue." He made no further comment.
A spokeswoman for Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said eight men from the coastguard and an officer had been taken prisoner by Iranian coastguards.
A senior officer running Iraqi patrol boats on the Shatt al-Arab waterway, between the city of Basra and the open waters of the Gulf, said one coastguard had been badly wounded by gunfire when Iranian forces intervened as an Iraqi patrol was attempting to search a ship suspected of smuggling oil.
The local governor said an Iraqi coastguard had been killed.
