Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said the case was following normal procedures, holding out the possibility that the Britons could be brought to trial.

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He said the Britons were being treated well and that the only woman among the sailors, 26-year-old Faye Turney, had been given privacy.

"They are in completely good health. Rest assured that they have been treated with humanitarian and moral behavior," Hosseini The Associated Press.

In talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, Beckett demanded that British diplomats be allowed to meet with the crew to make their own assessment.

Hosseini later told Iran's official news agency that the Britons would not be given consular access until Iran completes its inquiry.

US officials said the crisis began when British sailors boarded an Indian-flagged commercial ship suspected of carrying smuggled cars.

The ship turned out not be smuggling goods and its captain provided a statement that his vessel was in Iraqi waters at the time it was stopped by the British, US Navy Cmdr. Kevin Aandahl, the spokesman for the US Fifth Fleet, told The Associated Press from fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain.

He said US officials knew the GPS coordinates of the ship at the time of the incident, but would not release them publicly.

Some in Iran have called for the British crew to be held as leverage to gain the release of at least five Iranians detained by the US military in Iraq for allegedly being part of a Revolutionary Guard force.

Blair said the two issues were not related.

"Any Iranian forces who are inside Iraq are breaching the UN mandate and undermining the democratically elected government of Iraq, so they have got no cause to be there at all," the prime minister said.

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