Turkey's president appreciates Iran's activities

Turkey's President Abdullah Gul, in a meeting with Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, appreciated Iran's valuable activities in the world. Salehi, who is in Turkey, conferred with President Gul on Friday. The president expressed his pleasure with Salehi's visit to Turkey and called bilateral relations sincere and friendly and also expressed satisfaction with consultations done in the visit.  Gul expressed satisfaction with his visit to Iran and called for continuation of consultations and visits between officials of both countries and underlined necessity of acceleration of removing existing obstacles in the way of expansion of trade and economic ties.  Salehi, for his part, said that the visit supposed to be made in a different time, but because of the recent terrorist incident in Turkey, in which a number of Turkey's citizens were killed or wounded, he brought forward the visit to express Iranian government and nation condolences over the incident.  Referring to efforts made in Iran to expand ties with Turkey, the foreign minister expressed hope that by removing existing obstacles, the two countries can witness expansion of economic relations.  Concerning terrorism and terrorist acts in the region, Salehi said that we need a collective security in the region and in this concern, all regional countries should participate and cooperate for the cause.  He added that if we know who is supporting terrorists and how they receive money, information, and weapons, we can fight with them better.  Salehi after meetings with Turkish president, prime minister as well as foreign minister will depart Turkey for Tehran on Friday evening.