Turkish daily reports Armenian-Turkish meeting cancelled

Hurriyet web site, Istanbul
19 Jan 05

The Spring 2005 meeting of the Turkish Armenian Platform, at which the
genocide allegations were on the table, has been cancelled after the
Armenian side failed to send the necessary documents. This attitude of
the Armenians has meant that the hottest meeting set up in connection
with the events of 1915 has been thrown away.

The Viennese Armenian-Turkish Platform, an international body set up
to solve the problems that exist between Turkey and Armenia, including
the tragedy alleged to have happened in 1915, announced that with the
failure of the Armenian side to send the documents it promised the
round table meeting scheduled for spring 2005 has been cancelled. In
the statement made to the world and signed by platform members Dr Wolf
Dieter, Kerstin Tomenendal and Dr Inanc Atilgan, it said that the
Armenian side had failed to hand over the documents it had promised to
get to the platform by last August.

In the statement it also said that the platform’s Turkish members were
in favour of continuing the dialogue and that they had submitted their
own documents regarding 1915 to the platform. In the announcement by
the Viennese Armenian-Turkish Platform it was noted that at the first
Turkish-Armenian round table meeting held in June 2004 the mutual
exchange of almost 100 documents was made thus initiating the dialogue
between both parties. The official statement maintained that this was
the closest contact established between Turkey and Armenia in 90
years, and said that continuation of the process would be a major step
towards solving the problem.

Stating that Armenian scholar had first objected to the Ottoman
language documents being read the announcement noted that the
situation was then made known to the Turkish side, which then
suggested that the documents be handed over with the Ottoman script
transliterated into Latin script. The statement said that this
proposal was put to the Armenians, but that the Armenians did not
reply. It was stated that in this situation the meeting scheduled for
2005 had been cancelled and that such an opportunity as this giving
both sides the means to present their views had been missed because of
Armenia’s attitude.

[Passage omitted]

Maintaining that relations between Turkey and Armenia needed to be
corrected Moscow Radio announced that Russia was prepared to act as
mediator and guarantor of any agreements. In the commentary broadcast
on state radio it was stated that Russia’s President Putin and
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had attended a
Russian-Turkish summit recently and that Armenia’s relations with both
Russia and Turkey had been discussed during the talks. The radio
station noted that during the talks Putin had said they were ready to
put in the effort needed to solve thorny issues between regional
countries. “Russia will do this as a mediator and guarantor of any
agreements made,” commented the radio.