DAVOS (AA) - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, ''terrorists do not have religion, nationality, race and homeland.''
Holding a news conference, Prime Minister Erdogan who is currently in Davos town of Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum, highlighted importance of preventing terrorism from becoming global.
''We should concentrate on measures to be taken to globalize peace. Poverty and ignorance are the basic reasons of terrorism. All countries should cooperate to eliminate poverty and ignorance in the world. Also, terrorists do not have religion, nationality, race and homeland. As a country which suffered much from terrorism, Turkey has always advocated international terrorism in fight against terrorism,'' he said.
Prime Minister Erdogan told reporters, ''if we allocate the money which we spent for fight against terrorism, to under-developed countries, we can overcome poverty to a great extent. The same thing is also valid for the defense industry expenditures. As Turkey, we declared 2005 as the year of Africa. Members of the our cabinet will give priority to African countries in their foreign visits to develop our cooperation with them.''
Referring to the massive quake-triggered tsunami disaster in southern Asia, which claimed more than 280 thousand lives, Prime Minister Erdogan said, ''everyone in the world should give a helping hand to survivors in the region.''
2005-01-28