UN Security Council member Turkey insisted yesterday that diplomacy is the best way to resolve Iran’s nuclear crisis and offered to help break a deadlock over an atomic fuel deal for Tehran.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, on a visit to Tehran, reiterated that Ankara, which has resisted a US push for a fourth round of sanctions against Iran, favored negotiations to resolve the impasse.
World powers led by the US believe Iran’s nuclear program is masking a drive for atomic weapons. Tehran says the program is solely aimed at generating electricity to fuel its growing economy.
“The solution for Iran’s nuclear program 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 said. “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 program, but did not explicitly react to Ankara’s latest offer.
“Turkey will do its part if Iranians deem fit,” Davutoglu said in response.
Western powers are particularly infuriated with Iran because it defiantly began work on high-grade uranium enrichment after a deadlock over a UN-drafted deal to supply Tehran with the material intended to power a research reactor.
The deal from last October envisaged Iran sending its low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for conversion into high-grade 20 percent enriched uranium, to be returned later to Tehran as fuel for the medical research reactor.
However, the deal stalled when Iran insisted that the exchange of the two materials happen simultaneously inside the country, a condition rejected by world powers.
Mottaki at the weekend said Tehran planned to talk to all the 15 members of the UN Security Council, including Washington, over the proposed fuel swap.
On Monday he went further and said he believed a deal was still possible.
“If the other side has serious political will for the fuel exchange formula, this can be a multi-lateral trust building opportunity, especially for the Islamic republic to trust the other side,” he said.
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