Mullen urges Turkey to help on Iran, extend Afghan war command

Bloomberg: President Barack Obama’s top military adviser, Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, urged Turkey to help ensure Iran doesn’t gain the capacity to make atomic weapons and to extend the period of its commands in Afghanistan.

By Viola Gienger

Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama’s top military adviser, Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, urged Turkey to help ensure Iran doesn’t gain the capacity to make atomic weapons and to extend the period of its commands in Afghanistan.

“The mutual goal of Iran not achieving a nuclear-weapons capability, that we completely agree on, we just need to reinforce,” Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters today in Ankara. Both countries need to “do all we can to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Mullen met yesterday with the new head of the Turkish armed forces, General Isik Kosaner, and with Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul and is scheduled to meet today with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Mullen praised Turkey’s role in charge of international troops in the region around Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, which expires in October, and in providing police training and staffing for reconstruction teams.

“We would like to see Turkey sustain all of those efforts because they’ve been so important in Afghanistan and also because of the critical time in which we find ourselves in Afghanistan right now,” Mullen said.