ARMENIAN PM TELLS EU: TOO SOON TO MAKE TURKEY A MEMBER
By Dmitry Solovyov

Reuters, UK
Sept 26 2007

MOSCOW, Sept 25 (Reuters) – Armenia said on Tuesday the European
Union would be making a "strange" decision if it admitted Turkey
before Ankara had made progress in settling disputes with Yerevan.

Turkey shut its borders with its tiny neighbour Armenia in
1993 in protest at Armenian forces’ capture of territory inside
Azerbaijan, Ankara’s historic Muslim ally, during fighting over the
Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The two countries are also at odds over Anakara’s refusal to
acknowledge as genocide the massacre of large numbers of Armenians
in Ottoman Turkey at the start of the last century. Turkey has no
diplomatic ties with the former Soviet republic.

"I believe it would be very strange for the Europeans to accept to
their family a country which sometimes employs principles running
counter to the principles of the European Union," Armenian Prime
Minister Serzh Sarksyan said.

But Sarksyan, speaking at a news briefing during a visit to Russia,
a close ally, said he believed the EU application would pressure
Ankara into changing its stance on the border with Armenia and on
diplomatic relations.

"I believe … the more time passes the harder it gets for them to
stick to this position, because Turkey aspires to join the European
Union and faces a long negotiation process."

"So the ball is in Turkey’s yard, nothing depends on us," said
Sarksyan, a close ally of Armenian President Robert Kocharyan. Many
observers expect that when Kocharyan steps down next year, Sarksyan
will replace him as president.

Armenians and some European nations describe the 1915-17 killings
of Armenians, as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, as genocide. Turkey
maintains they were part of a partisan conflict in which many Turks,
Armenians and other nationalities died.

It is a crime in Turkey to call the killings genocide.

Earlier this year a French parliamentary bill making it a crime to
deny the killings were genocide soured relations between Paris and
Ankara. Turkey suspended talks on a major gas pipeline with Gaz de
France in protest at the bill.