Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said on Wednesday that the United Kingdom was freezing official bilateral business with Iran until the sailor crisis was resolved.
Updated at 6.55 pm
Iran said it will free the woman among the 15 Britishers it is holding
Iran state television will show footage of the captured soldiers
LONDON: Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said on Wednesday that the United Kingdom was freezing official bilateral business with Iran until the sailor crisis was resolved.
Earlier, Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed on Wednesday to intensify pressure on Iran over its seizure of 15 British naval personnel, saying Tehran faced "total isolation" in the increasingly tense standoff.
Britain produced evidence it said proved that the sailors and marines were in Iraqi waters when detained last Friday.
Iran insisted the Britons were in its territory.
Turkey said its diplomats might be allowed to see the 15 who are being kept at a secret location despite international calls for Iran to free them.
"It is time to ratchet up the diplomatic and international pressure" on Tehran, Blair told Parliament, adding that "there was no justification whatever" for the detention of the Britons in the Gulf.
"These personnel were patrolling in Iraqi waters under a United Nations mandate. Their boarding and checking of the Indian merchant vessel was routine. There was no justification whatever, therefore, for their detention," Blair told lawmakers.
"It was completely unacceptable, wrong and illegal," he said.
The prime minister said Britain was in contact with "all our key allies" to clarify the situation and "step up the pressure" on the Iranian government to release the captured soldiers immediately.
British military chiefs used maps and GPS coordinates to argue that the navy personnel were 1.7 nautical miles within Iraqi waters at the northern end of the Gulf.
"The action by Iranian forces in arresting and detaining our people is unjustified and wrong. As such it is a matter of deep concern to us," Vice-Admiral Charles Style, deputy chief of the defence staff, told reporters.
The developments marked a much harder line by Britain after Blair warned Tuesday that negotiations would enter a "different phase" if the 15 were not released.
In its presentation, the Ministry of Defence "unambiguously" contested the coordinates provided by Tehran for where the interception took place. In a statement received by Sky News television, the Iranian embassy in London responded by insisting that the British personnel had "illegally entered" Iranian territorial waters.
"This was a violation of (an) international border... an intrusive act justified their detention," the statement said.
London argues that the eight sailors and seven marines were conducting "routine" anti-smuggling operations when they were seized at gunpoint. Diplomatic efforts seemed to have hit a stumbling block on Tuesday when Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett cut short a visit to Turkey to brief parliament on the stand-off, having got nowhere in talks with her Iranian counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki.
British Home Secretary, John Reid, a former defence secretary, said the situation was delicate and "very dangerous."
"Let's just hope we get a speedy and a satisfactory resolution to this," he added, Reid told Sky News television.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said diplomats from his country may be granted access to the British military personnel, after he held talks with the Iranian foreign minister.
Britain could not immediately confirm this. "For the moment, the point is that we want access to them," said a Foreign Office spokesman, urging that the claim be treated with "caution." Beckett unexpectedly curtailed her Turkey trip after speaking to Mottaki in "very robust terms," according to a Foreign Office spokesman.
Citing sources, the BBC has said the British military personnel were being grilled at a Revolutionary Guards base in Tehran to find out if they were on an intelligence-gathering mission.
The BBC also reported that hardliners surrounding Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believe the 15 could be useful pawns, either to trade for five Iranians being held by US forces in Iraq or for concessions over Iran's controversial nuclear programme.
The European Union has demanded the sailors' release and the United States expressed its "concern and outrage."
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