Statements by U.S. Officials

Remarks by Richard Boucher, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Affairs, Followıng His Meeting With Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul

Ankara, June 14, 2006

A/S BOUCHER:  Good afternoon everyone.  It is a great pleasure for me to be able to come to Ankara and have consultations with the Foreign Ministry today.  We talked about Central Asia and the way Turkey and the United States can cooperate in Central Asia and Afghanistan.  I think we see common interests; we see common values. We see a lot of common areas where we are working and want to cooperate well, and make sure that our influence and our activities in the region are positive and support each other and work together.  These meetings are the beginning of consultations.  They follow on the decisions that Secretary of State Rice and Foreign Minister Gul made earlier, in April, that we would start working even more closely together on some of these regional issues.  And I have to say this day for us was very successful. 

We also talked about Afghanistan in some detail.  The United States is very appreciative of what Turkey has done in Afghanistan.  Turkey understands fundamentally the importance of success in Afghanistan and is contributing money, contributing people, contributing militarily to success in Afghanistan.  We think that’s very important.  We look forward to Turkey taking on the Provincial Reconstruction Team later this year.  We talked about the planning for that.  And I have to say they have already thought of many of the things that need to be done.  I was coming here to maybe offer some advice on that score and what I have heard in fact was that Turkey is already preparing very, very well for taking over the Provincial Reconstruction Team. 

So it has been a very good discussion, a useful discussion.  I think US-Turkish cooperation and coordination in Central Asia and Afghanistan is alive, it is strong and it is vital to success in these areas and we are going to keep doing it. 

I can take one or two questions.

QUESTION:  Do Turkey and the US also have common interests in resolving or working on the Iranian issue?  And did you discuss this matter?

A/S BOUCHER:  We really didn’t discuss Iran today.  I think our Ambassador and people in Washington have spoken about this.  The simple answer is yes.  None of us want to see Iran become a nuclear weapon state.  And we do have a common interest there.  But we didn’t discuss it today.

QUESTION:  Have you also discussed energy issues related to Central Asia, especially the BTC pipe line that has already been started?  We know that Israel is also interested in BTC going to Israel.  Have you also discussed this issue?

A/S BOUCHER:  We didn’t discuss any Israel connections to this, but we did discuss BTC.  And we certainly, as you do, see the opening of BTC as a very important development.  It offers opportunities to Central Asia.  It offers opportunities for multiple sources, multiple outlets for the energy of Central Asia and multiple supply lines for people in Turkey and Europe.  We also talked about the possibility of gas coming along from Baku, Tbilisi and into Turkey.  The United States is going to support a feasibility study on the possibility of a trans-Caspian gas line from Kazakhstan that might hook into this.  So there are a number of things we are looking at this energy corridor, this corridor from the east to the west that Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan represents.  We think it’s a very important strategic development in the region and one that we want to cooperate and work with very closely.

QUESTION:  Did you talk about Turkish-Armenian relations?

A/S BOUCHER:  No, we didn’t talk about that either. 

It is a pleasure to see you all and it’s a great pleasure to be here today.