Turkey must drop preconditions for diplomatic relations – Armenia

Turkey must drop preconditions for diplomatic relations – Armenia
By Tigran Liloyan

ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 1, 2005 Thursday

YEREVAN, September 1 — Armenia is ready to establish diplomatic
relations with Turkey without any preliminary terms, the Armenian
president’s press secretary, Viktor Sogomonian said on Thursday.

“Armenia’s stand remains unchanged. We are ready to enter into a
constructive dialogue with Turkey at any time,” he said, adding that
the two leaders discussed these issues in messages they exchanged
lately.

“Yerevan has a very positive vision of the ever-stronger dialogue
between Moscow and Ankara, and of their efforts to enhance cooperation
and security,” Sogomonian said. “Relations between Russia and Armenia
have a strategic dimension to us. We believe that deeper cooperation
between Moscow and Ankara may prove a certain mediatory resource for
addressing our own issues,” he said.

Armenia and Turkey have a 330-kilometer-long common border,
but no diplomatic relations. Ankara says it is ready to normalize
bilateral relations with Yerevan, if it stops demanding international
acknowledgement of the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 1915
and curtails support for Nagorno-Karabakh in the smoldering conflict
with Azerbaijan.

Emil Lazarian

“I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS