Thursday, Mar 08, 2012

By Laurence Norman and Alessandro Torello

Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

BRUSSELS (Dow Jones)--Russia and China share the blame for the bloodshed in Syria because of their moves to block United Nations action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, Turkey's minister for European Union affairs said Thursday.

Turkey has become an increasingly outspoken critic of Assad's crackdown on protesters, which has left thousands dead, and is calling for Assad to step aside.

Speaking with Dow Jones Newswires in Brussels, Egemen Bagis said Assad has been able to successfully exploit the UN Security Council's divisions to blunt international action against him.

"We have to get them on board. I think we need to establish international legitimacy for any action and we have to convince President Assad to do the right thing," he said. "There is bloodshed that is going on right now and all the countries that are preventing any action would share the guilt."

While Ankara was cautious to speak out initially about events in Syria, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been urging a humanitarian aid corridor to Syria and accused Assad's regime of "butchering its own people."

Bagis said if the UN Security Council acted, violence could be stopped "overnight."

On Iran, Bagis warned that tighter EU and U.S. sanctions could make a diplomatic solution to Tehran's nuclear program harder to find.

He welcomed the likely resumption of talks, which could start again later this month and said the international community needed to show patience in the negotiations.

"Iranians invented the concept of bargaining, they invented the game chess, they are very skillful negotiators. But if the alternative of negotiation is war, the worst peace is better than the best war," he said.

Turkey and Brazil won Tehran's backing in 2010 for a nuclear-fuel swap that involved transferring Iranian uranium abroad for enrichment in return for fuel for a nuclear research reactor. However the U.S., Europe and others didn't back the deal. Bagis wouldn't say if Turkey would push fresh proposals once talks resume.

Bagis also turned to the regional battle to secure gas from the Caspian Sea.

He defended Turkey's expanding energy links with Russia and chastised the European Union for failing to move ahead with its own pipeline projects that would have transported Caspian gas to Europe.

The EU had hoped Caspian gas imports from Azerbaijan could reduce its dependence on Russian energy exports. Any non-Russian energy route would flow through Turkey.

"Turkey is a hub. Whoever wants to connect to the hub and take a piece of the action, they should be able to," Bagis said. "But first Europe has to decide" what it wants. "There is no united energy policy in Europe that I can see."

Bagis also said that while stalled talks over Turkey joining the EU weren't making closer ties impossible, they weren't helping, either. Cypriot opposition has meant Turkey and the EU have been unable to open talks on energy policy--one of the "chapters" that make up accession talks.

"I would be a much more forthcoming fighter of European energy needs in the Turkish government if I had opened the chapter on energy," he said.

Bagis said if the EU allowed Cyprus to hold its energy needs "hostage," it would be "their problem."

-By Laurence Norman and Alessandro Torello, Dow Jones Newswires; laurence.norman@dowjones.com;

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

08-03-12 2017GMT