Ahmadinejad calls for US forces to leave Gulf

ABU DHABI, May 13 (Reuters) Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for an end to the presence of US troops in the Gulf during a visit to the US-allied United Arab Emirates today, an Iranian news agency reported.

''With each other's help, we can turn the Persian Gulf to the gulf of peace and friendship,'' the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying in a meeting with his UAE counterpart Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan.

''We all wish that foreign troops would leave the region and give a chance to countries in the region to establish security in the region themselves,'' Mehr quoted Ahmadinejad as saying at the start of his two-day visit, the first to the Gulf Arab country by an Iranian head of state.

Like Iran's other Gulf Arab neighbours, the UAE has expressed concern about non-Arab Iran's nuclear programme.

The United States, which has a strong military presence in the Gulf, accuses Iran of seeking to make nuclear weapons and has sought tougher sanctions against Iran. Iran says its only wants to generate power to allow more oil exports.

Abu Dhabi and Tehran have full diplomatic ties and strong trade links despite a three-decade dispute over three strategic islands in the Gulf, through which a third of the world's sea-borne crude oil supplies pass.

The UAE president appeared to support a moderate approach to Iran's standoff with the West.

''The world community should consider in all its ... decisions the interests of all regional countries and their people to ensure their security, peace and continued development,'' UAE's official WAM news agency quoted Sheikh Khalifah as saying. It did not elaborate.

The White House said today that US and Iranian officials would meet in the next few weeks in Baghdad about security in Iraq, confirming a similar announcement by Tehran.

The UAE said on Wednesday it would free 12 detained Iranian sailors in an apparent goodwill gesture on the eve of the visit.

Iranian media said the commercial divers had been detained by the UAE north of the Gulf island of Abu Musa, one of three disputed islands that the UAE claims and which Iran controls.

The divers were seeking to retrieve goods from a ship that sank on its way from Dubai to an Iranian port, media reported.

REUTERS TB PM2130