TURKEY’S ACCESSION TO EU TO HELP NORMALIZE TIES WITH ARMENIA – SPEAKER

Mediamax Agency, Armenia
Dec 19 2007

Yerevan, 19 December: Armenian Parliament Speaker Tigran Torosyan
said today in Yerevan that Armenia supports Turkey’s membership of
the European Union.

While speaking at the parliamentary session on "Armenian-Turkish
relations: Problems and Prospects", he expressed the hope that "it
will be possible to find keys to normalization of bilateral relations
in the very area of the European integration of Turkey and Armenia".

"Turkey’s membership of the European Union will allow us to have a
predictable neighbour who observes the European system of values that
is close to us," Torosyan said, the Mediamax news agency reports.

"The Armenian authorities do not accept Turkey’s preconditions as
a basis for normalizing bilateral relations and have the will and
courage not to entrust the settlement of the issue to historians,"
the parliament speaker said.

"Armenia has no right to intervene in the process of the international
recognition of the Armenian genocide, considering this to be
an internal matter of each country that takes such a decision,"
Torosyan said.

"We cannot limit the freedom of our foreign compatriots who back the
recognition of the genocide in their countries, and in this regard,
Turkey’s complaints to Armenia are groundless," the speaker said.