Downing Street Says

Asked what the Prime Minister thought about the situation with the two people held in Iran, the PMOS said that the Foreign Secretary had spoken this morning about this. It was clearly a very worrying development. The Foreign Office had clearly done a very good job in working for their release and we were glad they had now been released. Put to him that the Foreign Secretary had said that he stuck to the view that military action was inconceivable and did the Prime Minister think this incident had raised the stakes in any way, the PMOS said that as the Foreign Secretary had said this morning it was sometimes difficult to differentiate between what was a local action at a local level and what was the result of something that was decided in Tehran. It was difficult to come down with a firm view on that. Both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary had said that what we needed to get across to the regime in Iran on the wider front was that their action in recent time had been unacceptable, such as their continued flaunting of the will of the IAEA and also the remarks by the President about Israel.

3 Comments »

Not so long ago this would have been written off as nothing; now it’s a "very worrying development". Remember the complete lack of emotion – well, more accurately, reaction of any kind – from the government when Margaret Hassan dissappeared? Ken Bigley? David Kelly? Now, even though they’ve been released it’s "very worrying". How worrying…

Still, at least it gives them the chance to show the Foreign Sec in a good light for a change; there haven’t been too many of those over the past few years!
Comment by PapaLazzzaru — 11 Nov 2005 on 11:39 pm | Link
They were released without charge after 13 days, what’s the problem

E-mail your MP and ask them to Lobby the Iranian government. IRAN should be brought into line. Like Britain, IRAN needs to extend the period that suspects can be held for questioning without charge to 28 days.

It really is shameful that the Iranian police have not got these powers and are unable to lobby their own government to get their detention laws changed.
Comment by anoneumouse — 13 Nov 2005 on 6:06 pm | Link
Exactly. Now the British government cannot complain about any other nation on earth detaining people for no reason for less than 91 days. It’s only when the boot’s on the other foot it dawns on people what the 90 day detention to fish for evidence, really means.
Comment by Mr Pooter — 14 Nov 2005 on 2:09 pm | Link

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

» Friday, November 11, 2005

Iran

3 Comments »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries