*ANKARA: *Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for cautionover blaming Iran for this month’s attack on a Saudi Arabian oil facilityin an interview with *Fox News*.
While Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for thestrikes on September 14, Riyadh, Washington and several Europeangovernments say Iran was responsible.
Tehran has denied any role in the strikes.
“I don’t think it would be the right thing to do to blame Iran,” Erdogansaid in the interview on Wednesday at the UN in New York.
“We need to recognise the fact that attacks of this scale come from severalparts of Yemen.
“If we just place the entire burden on Iran, it wouldn’t be the right wayto go because the evidence available does not necessarily point to thatfact,” he added, according to *Fox News’* translation of his comments.
The strikes on the Abqaiq plant and the Khurais oil field knocked out halfof Riyadh’s oil production which has since been largely restored.
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Erdogan also criticised US sanctions on Iran, saying such measures “havenever solved anything”.
He denied allegations that Turkey had helped Iran bypass sanctions in thepast, saying these were allegations by government opponents.
“These are the allegations voiced by a terrorist organisation known as FETOwho are behind the failed coup of July 2016 in Turkey,” Erdogan told* FoxNews.*
“These allegations are more than wrong, these are all produced propagandaby the FETO terrorist organisation.”
Turkey refers to the movement of US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulenas ‘FETO’ but the organisation denies involvement in the coup attempt andinsists it is a peaceful group promoting education and Islam. -APP/AFP
