ARMENIA HOPEFUL ABOUT START OF TURKEY’S EU TALKS
By Emil Danielyan

Armenialiberty.org, Armenia
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Oct 4 2005

Official Yerevan expressed hope late Tuesday that Turkey will be more
interested in normalizing relations with Armenia and recognizing the
Armenian genocide after the difficult start of its membership talks
with the European Union.

“Armenia hopes that the start of the EU accession process will prompt
[Turkey] to open the border with Armenia as soon as possible and to
make real efforts to protect minority rights and uphold freedom of
speech and other democratic values and standards in the country,”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamlet Gasparian said in a statement.

“We also hope that during the process Turkey will recognize the
Armenian Genocide, something which the European Parliament deemed
a precondition for Turkey’s membership of the EU in its latest
resolution,” said Gasparian.

The resolution adopted on September 28 “calls on Turkey to recognize
the Armenian genocide” and “considers this recognition to be a
prerequisite for accession to the European Union.” It also urges
Ankara to drop preconditions for improving its strained ties with
Yerevan. The demands were rejected by Turkish leaders, with Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledging to “continue on our way.”

Armenia has repeatedly urged the EU make Turkish membership conditional
on genocide recognition and the lifting of the Turkish blockade imposed
in 1993. But EU officials say while the Armenian demands will be on
the agenda of the accession talks, they are not a precondition for
Turkish’s accession to the union, which is strongly opposed by the
Armenian Diaspora in Europe.

Hundreds of Armenians demonstrated on Monday outside a government
building in Luxembourg where the foreign ministers of the 25 EU
member states were discussing terms for the start of the accession
talks. The negotiation process formally began later in the day and
is expected to take 10 years or more.

(GI-Photolur photo: Turkish Foreign minister Abdullah Gul, right,
arrives with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw at the EU
headquarters in Luxembourg on Monday for a working session with EU
foreign ministers.)