Dialogue only way to resolve nuclear dispute: Ahmadinejad

ISTANBUL (AFP) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Monday told the West that dialogue and cooperation were the only way to resolve the dispute over his country's nuclear push which he said was a "natural right".

Efforts to confront or threaten Iran have left the West with "empty hands", Ahmadinejad told reporters in Istanbul after attending an economic summit of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

"The only way is to have cooperation and dialogue with Iran," the Iranian leader said through an interpreter. "We made them a proposal: give up confrontation with us and choose the way of cooperation and dialogue."

He also accused Western countries of treating Iran's nuclear drive politically, arguing that certain countries had "sided against Iran because they want to rule the whole world".

"Peaceful nuclear energy is a natural right of Iran," Ahmadinejad said.

The Iranian leader earlier attacked capitalism for the global financial meltdown and said economic programmes based on Islamic principles offered the way out.

"The world needs radical change," he said. "The world system based on usury has collapsed, proving its failure... We have to draw up programmes based on Islamic economic thinkers."

His comments coincided with increasing international pressure on Iran to agree to a UN-brokered plan to provide the Islamic Republic with enriched uranium for a Tehran reactor.

Under the proposals thrashed out in talks with France, Russia and the United States, Iran would ship most of its own stocks of low-enriched uranium abroad in return for fuel to power a research reactor in Tehran.

The proposals were designed to assuage fears that Iran could divert some of its uranium and further enrich it to reach the higher levels of purity required to make an atomic bomb.

World powers have endorsed the plan but Iran, which insists its nuclear programme is peaceful, has yet to give a final response.

The White House on Monday called on Iran to respond soon to the proposals or risk fresh sanctions as a top US official said that Washington wanted to give Tehran "some space" in the negotiations on the proposals.

"We are in extra innings on these negotiations," Washington's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Glyn Davies, told reporters in Vienna. "We want to give Iran some space. It's a tough decision."

The New York Times reported Monday that Washington had told Iran it is willing to allow the country to send its stockpile of enriched uranium to any of several nations, including Turkey, for safekeeping.

But the paper added that the Iranians were unwilling to ship out their uranium, proposing instead that the IAEA take custody of it, but keep it on Kish, a Gulf resort island that is part of Iran.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul, whose country is nurturing closer ties with neighbouring Iran, expressed Monday hope for "concrete and positive" results on the proposal package and said Ankara was ready to "play a facilitative role".

Turkey, a NATO member, has in recent years pushed for closer ties with Iran, Sudan and Syria, raising concerns that the country is turning its face to the East.

After a visit to Iran last month marked by the signing of bilateral partnerships on trade and energy, Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan firmly denied that his country was shedding its pro-Western outlook.

But he has accused the West of treating Iran unfairly over its nuclear programme -- earning praise from Ahmadinejad -- and argued that efforts to rid the Middle East of nuclear weapons must also focus on Israel, the region's sole but undeclared nuclear power.