Turkey offers to mediate between Iran and West over nuclear talks

Turkey said diplomacy is the best way to resolve the row over Iran's atomic programme and that Ankara is ready to mediate between Tehran and world powers.

UN Security Council member Turkey said Tuesday diplomacy is the best way to resolve the row over Iran's atomic programme and that Ankara is ready to mediate between Tehran and world powers.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, on a visit to Tehran, reiterated that Ankara favoured negotiations to resolve the impasse.

"The solution for Iran's nuclear programme is through negotiations and diplomatic process," Davutoglu said at a media conference in Tehran in remarks translated through an interpreter.

Turkey, one of the 15 UN Security Council members and a regional ally of Iran, "is ready to act as an intermediary in the issue of uranium exchange as a third country and hopes to have a fruitful role in this," Davutoglu added.

"We will continue to try our best to see what we can do for this nuclear fuel swap."

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who jointly addressed the press conference with Davutoglu, said Iran has been regularly consulting Turkey over its nuclear programme, but did not explicitly react to Ankara's latest offer.

"Turkey will do its part if Iranians deem fit," Davutoglu said in response.

Iran says it enriches uranium for civilian applications and that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has a right to the technology already in the hands of many others.

However, most experts estimate that Israel has at least between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads, largely based on information leaked to the Sunday Times newspaper in the 1980s by Mordechai Vanunu, a former worker at the country's Dimona nuclear reactor.

Israel, which has initiated several wars in the region in its 60-year history, has not denied having nuclear weapons, but has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and open its facilities for IAEA perusal.

Israel also often threatens Iran an attack over its nuclear sites.


/World Bulletin/