"At that first meeting [on Saturday 24 March] the Iranian Ambassador gave us, on behalf of his government, the co-ordinates of the site where that government claimed our personnel had been detained. They were NOT of course where we believed the incident took place but we took delivery of them as the statement of events of the government of Iran. On examination these co-ordinates, supplied by Iran, are themselves in Iraqi waters.

"On Sunday 25 March I spoke to Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian Foreign Minister...I pointed out that not only did the coordinates for the incident as relayed by HMS Cornwall show that the incident took place 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi waters, but also that the grid coordinates for those incidents that the Iranian authorities had provided our Embassy on Friday 23 March and Lord Triesman on Saturday 24 March showed also that the incident had taken place in Iraqi waters.

"When our Ambassador and my colleague Lord Triesman followed up with the Iranian authorities on Monday 25 March, we were provided with new, and I quote 'corrected' grid coordinates by the Iranian side which now showed the incident as having taken place in Iranian waters. As I made clear to Foreign Minister Mottaki when I spoke to him yesterday, we find it impossible to believe, given the seriousness of the incident, that the Iranians could have made such a mistake with the original coordinates, which after all they gave us over several days."