Both Sides Must Stop This
Mad Confrontation, Now
craigmurray.co.uk
March 29, 2007
Craig Murray
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Craig Murray was British
Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October
2004. |
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There is no agreed maritime boundary between Iraq and Iran in
the Persian Gulf. Until the current mad propaganda exercise of
the last week, nobody would have found that in the least a
controversial statement.
Let me quote, for example, from that well
known far left source Stars and Stripes
magazine, October 24 2006.
'Bumping into the Iranians can’t be helped in
the northern Persian Gulf, where the lines between Iraqi and
Iranian territorial water are blurred, officials said.
"No maritime border has been agreed upon by
the two countries," Lockwood said.'
That is Royal Australian Navy Commodore Peter
Lockwood. He is the Commander of the Combined Task Force in the
Northern Persian Gulf.
I might even know something about it myself,
having been Head of the Maritime Section of the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office from 1989 to 1992, and having been
personally responsible in the Embargo Surveillance Centre for
getting individual real time clearance for the Royal Navy to
board specific vessels in these waters.
As I feared, Blair adopted the stupid and
confrontational approach of publishing maps ignoring the
boundary dispute, thus claiming a very blurred situation is
crystal clear and the Iranians totally in the wrong. This has in
turn notched the Iranians up another twist in their own spiral
of intransigence and stupidity.
Both the British and the Iranian governments
are milking this for maximum propaganda value and playing to
their respective galleries. Neither has any real care at all for
either the British captives or the thousands who could die in
Iran and Basra if this gets out of hand.
Tony Blair's contempt for Middle Eastern lives
has already been adequately demonstrated in Iraq and Lebanon.
His lack of genuine concern for British servicemen demonstrated
by his steadfast refusal to meet even one parent of a dead
British serviceman or woman, killed in the wars he created. He
is confronting an Iranian leadership with an equal lust for
glory and lack of human concern.
It is essential now for both sides to back
down. No solution is possible if either side continues to insist
that the other is completely in the wrong and they are
completely in the right. And the first step towards finding a
peaceful way out, is to acknowledge the self-evident truth that
maritime boundaries are disputed and problematic in this area.
Both sides can therefore accept that the other
acted in good faith with regard to their view of where the
boundary was. They can also accept that boats move about and all
the coordinates given by either party were also in good faith.
The captives should be immediately released and, to
international acclamation, Iran and Iraq, which now are good
neighbours, should appoint a joint panel of judges to arbitrate
a maritime boundary and settle this boundary dispute.
That is the way out. For the British to insist
on their little red border line, or the Iranians on their GPS
coordinates, plainly indicates a greater desire to score
propaganda points in the run up to a war in which a lot of
people will die, than to resolve the dispute and free the
captives. The international community needs to put heavy
pressure on both Britain and Iran to stop this mad
confrontation.
The British people must break out of the
jingoism created by their laudable concern for their servicemen
and woman, and realise that this is just a small part of the
madness of our policy of continual war in the Middle East. That
is what we have to stop.
Source
Craig Murray on Iran
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