Paris, April 06: The crisis over Iran’s nuclear programme should be settled through diplomacy, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview published Tuesday by the French newspaper Le Figaro.
“We consider that this affair must be resolved by the diplomatic path,” Erdogan, who starts an official two-day visit to France Tuesday, told the newspaper.
Although several countries had been speaking in terms of sanctions, he said he did not think this was the way to get results.
Sanctions had already been voted through twice before, but those who had decided to apply had also been the first to violate them, he said.
“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,” he said.
“We cannot leave out that reality.”
In any case, one country in the region already possessed nuclear weapons, he added, referring to Israel. “I don’t see why anyone should get bogged down with this case,” he said.
Iran has been under mounting global pressure to abandon its nuclear program, with Western powers fearing it wants to build an atomic bomb. Tehran says the program is peaceful and only meant to produce energy.
–Agencies