DUBAI (Reuters) -- Dialogue between Persian Gulf Arabs and Iran over its nuclear program is the best way to avoid another crisis in the oil-exporting region, Qatar’s prime minister said.

“It is very important that we have clear relations, frank relations, with Iran,” Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani said in remarks aired on Monday.
Discussion is important and “each side must respect the other’s thinking and its understanding of security,” he said at a conference in Doha.
The United States accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons and has pressed its Persian Gulf Arab allies, including Qatar, to cut trade and other ties with Tehran.
Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and has mounted its own diplomatic policy to boost ties with Persian Gulf Arabs.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei presented a report on Iran’s nuclear program to the IAEA Board of Governors on Friday which vindicated the country by reaffirming its nuclear transparency.
“The agency has been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran,” ElBaradei said in the report.
Sheikh Hamad said Persian Gulf Arabs should be careful to prevent misunderstandings or international machinations from pushing the region into another war.
Referring to past wars and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, he said: “Who has benefited from these wars and on what basis ... did these wars happen?
“All of them were based on unsound studies and we may have been hoodwinked and we reached the result that we have destroyed ourselves, for the power of Iraq was important to the Arab and Islamic world and so was the power of Kuwait and of Iran.”
Of Iran’s nuclear program, he said: “It could be that this issue is peaceful and we could benefit from it.”
He added: “The most important thing is that we do not enter into an international game in which we will be exploited ... and come out as the losers on both sides.”