ARMENIA NOT BUDGING IN RIFT WITH TURKEY – SPEAKER

Russia & CIS General Newswire
December 19, 2007 Wednesday 9:26 PM MSK

Armenia will not budge from principles that prevent it from normalizing
its relations with Turkey, Armenian parliament speaker Tigran Torosian
said on Wednesday.

Turkey objects to massacres of ethnic Armenians in the Ottoman Empire
in 1915 being qualified as an act of genocide and sides with Azerbaijan
in the Armenian-Azeri conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.

These are obstacles to normalizing Armenian-Turkish relations, he said.

"Turkey moves problems involving a third state, Azerbaijan, into
the realm of Armenian-Turkish relations and cannot overcome its
own psychological complexes concerning the recognition of the [1915
massacres as an act of] genocide, and continues to blockade Armenia,"
Torosian said at a meeting with the European Union special envoy for
the South Caucasus, Peter Semneby.

"These steps in no way fit in with the European system of values,
Armenia cannot accept those conditions," the speaker said.

Speaking of the 1915 massacres, Torosian rejected a Turkish demand
for setting up a commission of historians to explore the issue.

Semneby argued that the findings of the proposed commission should
not be allowed lead to any conditions being laid for Turkish-Armenian
talks and said Turkey’s proposed entry to the EU would offer wide
opportunities for more predictable relations between the two countries.

Semneby is on a two-day visit to Yerevan to attend a parliamentary
hearing on Armenian-Turkish relations.