Turkish premier says world not interested in Turkey's proposal to establish international counter-terrorism platform

ANKARA (A.A) - 10.05.2011 - The Turkish prime minister has said that the world was not interested in Turkey's proposal to establish an international platform to combat terrorism.
Replying to questions of reporters at a TV program broadcast by Kanal 7, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey was currently hosting the 4th United Nations Conference on Least Developed Countries.
"Unfortunately, developed countries are not much interested in this gathering. They showed same approach towards the previous three meetings. They are not here today either," Erdogan said.
The prime minister noted that Turkey would assume an important role concerning least developed countries for the next 10 years with the summit it was hosting at the moment.
He said the extent of the support least developed countries would receive from developed states would be assessed within such period.
"We will make everything we can for our friendly and brother countries, particularly for the ones in Africa," the premier said.
Pointing to the importance Turkey attached to the continent of Africa, Erdogan said Turkey planned to open 30 embassies in African countries in the first phase, and increase such figure to 52 in time.
Erdogan noted that poverty and terrorism were related matters, and supporting Africa was an important step in that context.
Upon a question on the death of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Erdogan said Turkey had called on the world to establish an international platform to fight with terrorism right after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
"At that time, terrorism was a major issue for us, however, nobody was interested in our problem. They are not interested today either," he said.
Erdogan said some circles had created an expression like "Islamic terrorism" after the attacks, and Turkey had tried to prevent efforts aiming at linking terrorism to Islam.
The prime minister also said that USA's declaring the world a safe place after bin Laden's death was not accurate.
"This is not an individual act. There is not only one Ladin in the world, there are many," he said.