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Iran says NATO interference in Caucasus unproductive

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that the Caucasus does not need NATO interference in the region in the wake of the recent conflict in Georgia.
TEHRAN, September 16 (RIA Novosti) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that the Caucasus does not need NATO interference in the region in the wake of the recent conflict in Georgia.

"Countries in the Caucasus region can solve their own problems without the interference of NATO or others," Ahmadinejad said at a meeting with Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandyan in Tehran.

"Such interference will only worsen the situation in the Caucasus," he added.

NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, heading a delegation of envoys from all 26 members of the Western military alliance, arrived in Georgia on Monday to discuss plans for Tbilisi's possible NATO membership and met with President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Russia and Georgia fought a five-day war in August after Georgian forces had launched an attack on South Ossetia. Two weeks after the conclusion of Moscow's military operation to "force Georgia to accept peace," Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia, another separatist republic, as independent states.

The West heavily criticized both the recognition of the rebel regions and what it called Russia's "disproportionate" response to the Georgian attack. Russia and NATO have since frozen cooperation.

Ahmadinejad said the times of a unipolar world are over and called for a new world order that could provide stable peace and friendship among nations.

The Islamic Republic itself is in political standoff with the West over the country's nuclear program.

Iran is currently under three sets of relatively mild UN Security Council sanctions for defying demands to halt uranium enrichment, which it says it needs purely for electricity generation despite Western accusations that the program is geared toward weapon production.

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