The Iranian envoy in Baghdad acknowledged today that the Iranian coastguard had stopped three Iraqi vessels in an incident which is testing improved ties between the former foes.
Hasan Kazemi-Qomi said the Tehran government was investigating the matter after Iraqi officials accused Iran of taking hostage nine Iraqis working on the vessels.
He said the Iranian coastguard had taken action against the boats because they had crossed into Iranian waters.
"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," Kazemi-Qomi said.
Mohammed al-Waili, the regional governor of the southern Iraqi city of Basra, said he believed the nine Iraqis aboard the boats could be returned as early as Thursday.
The affair is a test of the new warmth in relations between Baghdad and Tehran since pro-Iranian Shi'ites took control in Iraq after U.S. forces overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003. Iran and Iraq fought a long and bitter war during the 1980s.
Iranian officials on Tuesday denied the incident. Iraqi officials said the Iraqi boats and crews had been seized on Saturday or Sunday.
An Iraqi government statement said the incident was raised on Tuesday in a meeting between Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari and Kazemi-Qomi.
It said Zebari, who handed Kazemi-Qomi a diplomatic memorandum on the incident, hoped the issue could be resolved in a brotherly spirit.
Kazemi-Qomi denied statements by Iraqi officials that there were clashes during the incident.
"There were no clashes. Relations between the Iranian and Iraqi coastguards are excellent," he said.
Waili told Reuters on Tuesday that the Iraqi coastguard had boarded an Iranian-skippered ship suspected of smuggling oil in Iraqi waters when they were overpowered by an Iranian patrol.
Lieutenant Colonel Ziyad Majid Wali, a coastguard commander in the Iraqi port of Abu Flous, told Reuters 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 waterway. Iran briefly seized three British naval patrol boats in the same area in June 2004, at a time when U.S.-led occupation forces were responsible for policing the border.