A senior Iranian military official has said te eight British sailors arrested for entering Iran's waters could be released soon if investigations show their incursion was not ill-intended.
"If the result of the interrogations of those British military men shows that they didn't have any bad intention, they will be released soon," Ali Reza Afshar, deputy head of the armed forces chief of staff, told the ISNA students news agency.
Earlier reports suggested Iran would prosecute the eight. The incident is the latest in a string of boat seizures in the Gulf area by Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
"The British military officials were arrested after they entered 1,000 metres into Iranian waters. The British confessed that they were arrested when they were inside Iran's waters," al Alamreported, citing unnamed Iranian military sources
A British government spokeswoman said Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw spoke by telephone with his Iranian counterpart, Mr Kamal Kharrazi, about the seizure of the British vessels and crew.
She declined to give any details of the talks and could not say whether there had any been any progress on getting the Britons released.
A spokeswoman for the British Embassy in Tehran said British diplomats had requested permission to visit the detained men.