Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki will hold talks with Turkish officials here Friday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said, as international tensions run high over the Islamic state's nuclear program.
Announcing the visit in a television interview Wednesday, Babacan stressed Turkey insisted on dialogue to resolve the crisis between its eastern neighbor and U.S.-led Western powers who suspect Tehran of secretly developing nuclear weapons.
"We believe that dialogue is the main instrument for a solution...there is a deep confidence gap between the two sides and dialogue is the way to bridge it," he said on NTV television.
The minister said Iran's nuclear program would also be high on the agenda of his talks here Thursday with U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley.
Neither the U.S. nor Israel have ruled out military action against Iran to stop its nuclear program, although Washington has repeatedly said it favors diplomacy.
In a major policy change, Washington announced it would send a senior diplomat to a meeting in Geneva between European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili on Saturday on the latest proposals to end the standoff.
Western powers and Israel - believed to be the only nuclear-armed state in the Middle East - fear that Iran's uranium enrichment program is aimed at producing a nuclear weapon. Tehran insists it is for peaceful energy purposes only.