Turkey steps up Middle East role with trade zone plans

Dubai: Turkey yesterday strengthened ties with its Arab neighbours, announcing plans to form a regional free trade zone with Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The announcement came amid allegations that Turkey is pulling away from the West.

Turkey, which voted against imposing a fourth set of crippling sanctions against Iran in the UN on Wednesday, described its stand as a matter of "honour" and said it was still trying to seek a diplomatic resolution of the row arising out of Iran's nuclear programme.

"We would not want to participate in such a mistake because history will not forgive us," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told 22 Arab foreign ministers attending the Turkish-Arab Cooperation Forum in Istanbul yesterday.

Erdogan said that, along with Brazil, Turkey intended to continue engaging Tehran, having last month secured a nuclear fuel swap deal that they had hoped would head off sanctions.

Italy says rethink needed

Meanwhile, Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini yesterday agreed with US secretary of defence Robert Gates' comments that the European Union was to blame for Turkey's shift away from the West.

"If we give Turkey the impression that we don't want them as a member of the European Union family, then they will have a look around for other perspectives," he said alluding to regional powers like Iran and Syria.

Erdogan, however, denied that Turkey was shifting away from the West. "Those who say that Turkey has broken away from the West are the intermediaries of an ill-intentioned propaganda," he said. "We are open to all parts of the world. We are not open to one and closed to another."

Turkey's recent agreement with Iran and Brazil over a nuclear fuel swap, and Russia's vote in favour of sanctions on Iran, has brought Moscow's floundering relationship with Tehran under the spotlight. Despite the sanctions, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said the deal to sell Iran S-300 anti-aircraft missiles would go through.

"Air defence weapons, with the exception of portable missile systems, are not included in the UN registry of conventional weapons which are mentioned by the resolution on Iran," he said.

Russia several years ago agreed on the deal but has never delivered the weapons amid pressure from the United States and Israel and its failure to deliver the missiles has become a major sticking point in once strong bilateral ties.