FM CONFIRMS YEREVAN READINESS FOR NORMALIZATION TALKS WITH TURKEY
by Tigran Liloyan

ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
November 5, 2006 Sunday 09:19 AM EST

Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanyan has once again confirmed
the readiness of his country to start a normalization dialogue with
neighboring Turkey.

The day before, the Armenian Foreign Ministry’s Press and Information
Department posted the minister’s comments on the statement by Turkish
counterpart Abdullah Gul in an interview with Radio Liberty.

The minister recalled that last year the Turkish and Armenian
presidents exchanged statements on the settlement between the two
countries, which have no diplomatic relations so far.

Turkey set forward a proposal to Yerevan to create a joint commission
of historians for discussing the issue of Armenians genocide in the
Ottoman Empire in 1915, which is the stumbling stone in normalization.

The Armenian side offered, in turn, to establish an intergovernmental
commission for exchanging opinions on a broad range of issues and
supported normalization without preconditions.

Oskanyan criticized Gul for saying that regular flights between the
two countries and the presence of Armenian citizens in Turkey evidenced
the openness of borders. Oskanyan described the statement as "untrue."

The minister said that "while the Turkish Criminal Code still
contains the article 301 envisaging criminal punishment even for the
discussion of genocide issues, the claims of open borders cannot be
taken seriously."

Oskanyan also reaffirmed that "historians from Armenia, Turkey and
other countries have studied the genocide issue outside Turkey and
drew independent conclusions confirming the fact of genocide, which
affected 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.