Turkey plays down Iran sanctions, backs diplomacy

As the US and its allies push for swift UN sanctions against Iran, Turkey urges diplomacy to settle the ongoing dispute over the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.

"We consider that this affair must be resolved by the diplomatic path," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro published on Tuesday.

Despite stepped-up efforts by the United States and its allies to rally international support for imposing tougher sanctions against Tehran, the Turkish premier said he did not think this was the way to get results.

Iran says its nuclear program is directed at the civilian applications of the technology. The West, however, accuses the country of having the intention to develop nuclear weapons.

Based on the allegation, Washington has been pushing to impose a fourth round of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions against Iran.

This is while inspectors of the UN nuclear watchdog, which has conducted the largest amount of inspection in the history of the body on Iran's nuclear program, have not found anything to verify that claim.

As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran says it will not bow to international pressure to abandon its right to enrich uranium for civilian use. The sanctions, which Iran says are illegal, have failed to force Tehran into stopping its enrichment work.

However, the White House campaign has been opposed by China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the UNSC, which says dialogue is the only solution to the issue. Russia, another veto-wielding member, says sanctions are not "optimal" in dealing with Iran over its nuclear program.

"There are the French, the Germans, the British, the Americans and the Chinese. They are all implicated and still manage, though indirect means, to get their products into Iran," Erdogan said.

"We cannot leave out that reality," he added.

Erdogan criticized the West's policy to focus only on Iran while turning a blind eye to nuclear weapons of Israel, as the only regime that possesses nuclear arsenals in the region, saying, "I don't see why anyone should get bogged down with this case."

Turkey — a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council — has repeatedly rebuked US calls for tougher sanctions against Iran.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=122582§ionid=351020104.