ARMENIAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE HOPES NATO TO HELP MEND TIES WITH TURKEY
Mediamax
Jan 30 2008
Armenia
Yerevan, 30 January: An Armenian presidential candidate and member of
the [Armenian Revolutionary Federation]Dashnaktsutyun party bureau,
Vahan Hovhannisyan, said in Yerevan today that sooner or later NATO
would influence Turkey concerning the issue of normalization of
relations with Armenia.
Vahan Hovhannisyan said this today during his meeting with journalists
in the Information Center on NATO inYerevan.
The candidate noted that the talks on Turkey’s entry in the EU are
accompanied with reforms, which will have apositive influence on the
prospect of normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations as well. At
the same time, VahanHovhannisyan said that Turkey is a member of
NATO for already a few decades and has always been considered to
be the"western advanced post of the alliance". "In Soviet times,
Turkey opposed the Soviet Union, today it alsohas a ‘special role’
caused by the instability in Iraq and in the whole Middle East,"
the member of theDashnaktsutyun bureau said.
Despite this fact, Vahan Hovhannisyan expressed the hope that other
member-states of NATO will realize the reason of cautious perception
of the alliance in Armenia, conditioned by Turkey’s policy, and will
work to improve thesituation.