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Monday 5 August 2013 17:10
Rouhani: Iran-Turkey Ties Highly Important for Region
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu hailed the age-old, friendly relations between the two countries, and stressed that good ties between the two Muslim neighboring nations are crucially important to the entire region.
Rouhani: Iran-Turkey Ties Highly Important for Region
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TEHRAN (Asremrooz):"The bilateral relations between Iran and Turkey have been much important to both nations and the entire region since long time ago and further expansion of mutual cooperation in different arenas will certainly be effective in the establishment of peace and stability in the region," Rouhani said during the meeting in Tehran on Monday.

"There reside abundant potentials and capacities for the development of the relations, which need to be utilized in a bid to further consolidate and deepen the two countries' ties at the bilateral, regional and international levels," he added.

Davutoglu, for his part, described the relations between Iran and Turkey as "good", and said, "Turkey believes that development of bilateral ties and cooperation between Tehran and Ankara serves both nations' interests."

In relevant remarks today, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Seyed Abbas Araqchi acknowledged existence of certain differences between Tehran and Ankara over certain regional issues, but meantime underlined that the Islamic Republic would never allow such differences leave a negative impact on the cooperation between the two countries.

"The relations between the two countries are much profound and age-old; of course, we have different issues with Turkey in our relations and have differences (with Ankara) in some cases which are related to the two countries' regional policies and not their bilateral ties," Araqchi told FNA earlier today.

"To some extent, we have differences with Turkey on Egypt, Syria and Iraq; we don’t deny the existence of such differences and speak about them openly and we have challenges with them in our meetings, but we don’t allow the differences to influence our cooperation in other fields and therefore, cooperation still continues in the other political, economic and cultural arenas," he added.

Iran and Turkey have recently expanded their bilateral relations, specially in trade and energy fields. Trade between Turkey and Iran has risen sharply over the past decade.

Iran-Turkey trade value exceeded $22bln in 2012.

The two countries' officials have repeatedly stressed the necessity for stronger relations and pursuing the planned increase of mutual trade to $30bln by 2015.
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