Erdogan set for talks on Armenia, Iran in Washington

Iran's controversial nuclear program and moves to jump-start normalization efforts by Armenia and Turkey are likely to be top items at a meeting of Turkish and US leaders on the sidelines of President Barack Obama's 47-country nuclear security conference starting in Washington today. The priority attributed to each issue by the Turkish and US sides as well as their stances on them may differ, however. While Obama is expected to press Turkey for parliamentary ratification of protocols signed with Armenia last fall towards normalized relations, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to respond to this pressure by urging Obama to do more to help resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, a territorial dispute between Yerevan and Turkey 's ally Baku . As for the Iran issue, Washington is pressing hard this month for a new UN Security Council resolution tightening sanctions on Tehran for refusing to engage in talks about its nuclear program. But just before leaving Istanbul on Sunday, Erdogan reiterated that Turkey , currently one of the rotating members of the council, believes that diplomatic means for resolving the issue have yet to be exhausted. Erdogan, asked about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to skip the conference after learning that Egypt and Turkey intended to raise the issue of Israel 's undeclared atomic arsenal at the meeting, said, "We never want nuclear armaments in our region. We are against them no matter which country possesses them. Whether it's Israel or Iran , this makes no difference." Erdogan added that there hasn't yet been an exact finding on whether Iran 's program is aimed at possessing nuclear weapons. "We want resolution of the issue through intensive diplomacy," he said, and criticized Israel for having nuclear weapons while being exempt from international inspection regimes. Israel is believed to be the only nuclear-armed power in the Middle East but has never confirmed or denied it, and it is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).