The ship has sunk to the bottom of Gulf waters and is still leaking oil

Captain Abdul Munim al-Janah, MEMAC

The Bahrain-based Marine Emergency Mutual Centre (MEMAC) says the five-kilometre (three-mile) wide oil slick could hit Iran's Cyrus oilfield or reach the Saudi Arabian coast within three weeks.

The US Navy, which leads multinational patrols in the Gulf enforcing United Nations sanctions against Iraq, said the Georgios, which had been intercepted three times in the past, was carrying nearly 1,900 tons of Iraqi crude oil.

"The ship has sunk to the bottom of Gulf waters and is still leaking oil. The leakage is very slow," MEMAC spokesman Captain Abdul Munim al-Janahi told French news agency AFP.

Captain al-Janahi said Iran had carried out an aerial surveillance of the area where the ship sank, about 188 kilometres (75 nautical miles) off the island of Khark, and had sent two flat-top barges there.

The oil slick is spreading along the coast of the UAE

MEMAC said the main problem was that the Georgios was a cargo ship and was not designed to carry any liquids or fuel.

The ship's owners have claimed the Georgios was sunk by the US Navy, but the Americans have denied responsibility.

"We don't know how it sank. It was too fast to tell, but the ship was in very poor condition," Commander Jeff Alderson of the US Fifth Fleet told AFP.

Iraq often tries to break the UN embargo, imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, by using aged vessels to smuggle crude oil.