TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's state media reported Wednesday that an Iranian envoy will be allowed to meet five Iranians detained by U.S. forces in northern Iraq - a sign of a possible breakthough in the standoff over Britons held by Iran.
In Baghdad, however, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William C. Caldwell said American authorities were still considering the request.
Caldwell said an international Red Cross team - including one Iranian - had visited the prisoners but he did not say when.
The Iranian report appeared as Britain and Iran were entering a sensitive phase in the efforts to free 15 British sailors and marines captured by the Iranians last month in disputed waters of the Persian Gulf.
A separate Iranian diplomat seized two months ago by uniformed gunmen in Iraq was released and returned Tuesday to Tehran. Iran had blamed the U.S. for the abduction, a charge American authorities denied.
The detention of the five other Iranians occurred in January in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish self-governing region in northern Iraq. Iraqi Kurds, like the country's Shiites, maintain close ties with Shiite-dominated Iran, despite their warm relationship with the U.S. - and they had been upset over the arrests in their own capital.
Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, himself a Kurd, told The Associated Press that the case of the five detained Iranians had no connection with that of the British sailors and marines.....
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