TEHRAN - State Minister Kursad Tuzmen said on Thursday that appropriate basis should be prepared for visit of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Iran.
Tuzmen told reporters at Tehran Embassy of Turkey that the issue was brought onto agenda during his meetings with Iranian officials and said, ''postponement or cancellation of Erdogan's visit is out of question, but it is necessary to provide appropriate atmosphere and Turkish-Iranian trade should be brought on a balanced level. Mutual visits will continue between Turkey and Iran on ministerial level.''
Tuzmen said, ''we are trying to make the trade between Turkey and Iran easier. We aim to make preferential trade agreement and to provide suitable time in banking, energy, transportation and other fields.''
Tuzmen, who could not set a certain date about Erdogan's Iran visit, said that they would exchange political messages besides commercial ones, but the main aim of Iran visit was economic issues.
Tuzmen said that Turkey's foreign trade deficit would be 1.2 billion dollars, if it imported three billion cubic meters of natural gas from Iran and this amount would be 2-2,5 billion dollars, if Turkey imported ten billion cubic meters of natural gas.
''Our biggest demand is to overcome this deficit, which is against Turkey in its trade with Iran, by selling goods and service to Iran. We aim to make this by the way of off-set and by decreasing tariff ratios with preferential trade system. We target to pay the price of natural gas taken from Iran as goods or services. There had been an agreement as giving goods and services in return to natural gas taken from Russia until 1994 and it was functioning very well. The way of eliminating imbalance in trade is to decrease tariffs and if we can do this, Turkish export products can increase their market share in Iran,'' noted Tuzmen.
When asked whether the threats of the United States and the European Union (EU) towards Iran due to its nuclear program would affect the target of increasing trade with Iran, Tuzmen said that the difficulty in the region stemmed from poverty and added that when permanent commercial relations developed in the region, permanent political relations would also develop and peace atmosphere would be restored.
Tuzmen said during his meetings with Iranian Minister of Roads and Transport Ahmad Khoram and Iranian Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance Tahmasb Mazaheri that the privatization of Tupras (petroleum refinery), Petkim (petrochemicals) and Tekel (tobacco and alcohol) would be completed within few months and Iranian Oil Company was interested in the privatization of Tupras, adding that Iran's making investment in this field would gain a different dimension to relations between two countries.
Noting that they were trying to privatize Petkim, Tupras and Tekel, Tuzmen said that they were also trying to include Iran in those privatization activities and thus, economic volume would grow between two countries.
Tuzmen, who was received by Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref-Yazdi yesterday, also held meetings with Iranian Minister of Petroleum Bijan Namdar-Zanganeh, Iranian Minister of Housing and Urban Development Ali Abdol-Alizadeh, Khoram and Mazaheri within his contacts in Iran.
(GC-AY) 02.10.2003