Talking to reporters on the return flight from a one-day official visit to Iran, Erdogan commented that the deployment of U.S. troops in Northern Iraq would be a mistake.
Erdogan was in Teheran discussing a wide range of issues, including natural gas trade, the nuclear issue, Iraq, Lebanon and bilateral relations.
Recalling his meeting with the U.S. President George Bush in Riga, Erdogan said: “The Baker Plan should be waited upon. All resistant groups in Iraq want the United States to pull out. When you look at the number of casualties during the war, you see 3,000 US troops dead and a loss of hundreds of thousands of Sunnis and Shiites. All are Muslim and Iraqi. Turkey and Iran should seek to prevent a Sunni-Shiite conflict. There is a great chance that such a conflict would spread to Lebanon. This risk should be eliminated by resolving the Lebanese crisis immediately.
“Meeting with Bush in Washington, he asked me to transmit to Teheran the message, ‘Work out the transparency issue, and we will resolve the rest through diplomatic means.’ He reiterated the same demand in Riga. We do not want to seem eager to propose a resolution. If our mediation is sought, we will offer it. The appropriate steps we took in the past have benefited us a lot.”
Prime Minister Erdogan stressed that Turkey needed Iranian natural gas. “When we assumed power, only nine cities were using natural gas, this figure is now 41, and will be 60 next year,” said Erdogan.
“In addition to Iran, we will also purchase Azeri, Egyptian and Iraqi natural gas. Our foreign trade volume with Iran has reached $6 billion. We set a $10 billion goal during the Khatami administration. However, the trade deficit should not be disadvantageous to us. For this reason, we have asked them to import more from us.”
Prime Minister Erdogan noted that Turkey welcomed Iranian cooperation over the PKK and said, “Our intelligence agencies are working well together.”
