The Iranian envoy in Baghdad said yesterday Iraqi vessels had encroached into Iranian waters and Teheran was investigating Iraqi accusations that Iran had kidnapped a coastguard patrol after a clash in the incident.

"The Iranian coastguard stopped an Iraqi vessel and two ships escorting it. Iran is investigating the matter and some answers should emerge in a few hours," said Hasan Kazemi-Qomi.

Iranian officials on Tuesday denied the incident, which Iraqi officials said took place on Saturday or Sunday.

The affair is a test of the new warmth in relations between Baghdad and Teheran since pro-Iranian Shi'ites took control in Iraq after US forces overthrew Saddam Hussein.

Kazemi-Qomi said an Iraqi vessel escorted by two other boats was on its way back to the Gulf after unloading cargo in an Iraqi port and was stopped by the Iranian coastguard after crossing into Iranian waters.

He declined to say whether Iran was holding nine Iraqi coastguards.

"These questions will be answered in a few hours. An investigation is under way," he said.

Mohammed al-Waili, the regional governor of Basra, said on Tuesday that the Iraqi coastguards had boarded an Iranian-skippered ship suspected of smuggling oil in Iraqi waters when they were overpowered by an Iranian patrol.

He accused the Iranians of "martyring" one Iraqi and "kidnapping" eight but said later he had been unable to confirm the death: "He has serious injuries and there are reports that he has died, but I have not been able to verify that," he told Al Arabiya television.

Kazemi-Qomi, who was called in by Iraq's foreign minister on Tuesday to discuss the release of the men, denied that there had been clashes on their tidal frontier.

"There were no clashes. Relations between the Iranian and Iraqi coastguards are excellent," he said.
 
Lieutenant Colonel Ziyad Majid Wali, a Coast Guard commander in the Iraqi port of Abu Flous, said the problem began when a patrol approached the ship, the Nour 1, suspecting it of smuggling oil near Abadan, on the Iranian side of the waterway.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani stepped in to cool tempers on Tuesday, conceding the nine Iraqis might have strayed across the border in the shifting tidal shoals of the Shatt al-Arab and calling their arrest a "mistake" that would soon be sorted out.

Iraq and Iran have a long history of disputes along the Shatt al-Arab. Iran briefly seized three British naval patrol boats in the same area in June 2004, at a time when US-led occupation forces were responsible for policing the border.

But relations between Baghdad and Teheran are at their warmest in decades, with Shi'ite leaders in power in Iraq since the fall of Saddam's Sunni Arab-dominated government.

(China Daily January 19, 2006)