Turkey PM to visit Iran, warns against sanctions

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday he would visit Iran in October and would bring up the Islamic republic's controversial nuclear program in talks with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Erdogan was speaking to reporters after Western leaders on Friday accused Iran of concealing a nuclear plant it is constructing southwest of Tehran. U.S. President Barack Obama warned Iran it would face "sanctions that bite" if it did not come clean.

But Erdogan urged caution. "Those sanctions won't bring about anything good for the people (of Iran)," he said. "So I think we have to be careful."

Asked if Turkey, which borders Iran, would support fresh U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran, Erdogan said: "Without seeing what would be in the resolution, it's difficult to say. We would look at the text and we would make our contribution and then we would make a decision."

Turkey is currently a member of the 15-nation Security Council, which has already passed three rounds of sanctions on Iranian firms and individuals designed to induce Tehran to halt uranium enrichment aimed at producing nuclear fuel.

Erdogan said Turkey had told Iran it must be "transparent" with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

Ahmadinejad, who like Erdogan visited New York this week to attend the U.N. General Assembly, said on Friday his country's newly disclosed nuclear fuel facility was legal and open for inspection by the IAEA.

Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful generation of electric power. The United States and other Western countries suspect it is aimed at producing nuclear weapons.

Those sanctions won't bring about anything good for the people of Iran. So I think we have to be careful

Turkish PM