WE SHOULD NOT EXPECT MUCH, AS THE PRESENT PROBLEMS HAVE A VERY LONG STORY
By H. Chaqrian
AZG Armenian Daily
01/10/2008
Armenia-Turkey
Says Turkish Foreign Minister
On September 26 in New York took place the trilateral meeting of
Foreign Ministers of Armenia, Turkey and Azerbaijan. Seemingly, the
most important achievement of that meeting was the decision was to
continue dialog between the aforementioned states in that format. The
meeting caused much consideration in international press, and the
response was positive for the most part.
Before referring to the comments, it should be mentioned that the
trilateral meeting was preceded by another meeting of Edward Nalbandian
and Ali Babacan, which lasted for about 40 minutes.
In a joint press conference after the meeting of the three Foreign
Ministers Ali Babacan said that Caucasus has great capacities. "if
peace and stability in Caucasus are achieved, great things can be
done. It is also important in sense of geopolitical location of
the region. Today we discussed the opportunity of establishing the
Caucasian Stability and Partnership Platform, as well as issues
peculiar to the region."
The Armenian Foreign Minister thanked his Turkish colleague for
arranging the meeting and appreciated Turkey’s initiative about the
Platform. He said that the Armenian and Turkish discussed opportunities
of full normalization of the relationships between the two countries
and exchanged opinions.
Mamedyarov said that taking into consideration all the risks and
problems in Caucasus, the meeting of the Armenian Turkish and
Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers was very important.
On the same day Ali Babacan gave a live interview to CNN-Turk. He
said that the dialogue between Armenia, Turkey and Azerbaijan shall
continue in the trilateral format and said that diplomatic contacts
between Armenia and Turkey, which started almost a year ago, shall
develop. Referring to the issues of opening the Armenian-Turkish
border and of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Foreign Minister said,
"We should not expect much, as the present problems have a very long
story, some of them were originated in the times of World War 1. We
will proceed at a slow pace. We have a plenty of problems to consider".
We would like to add that Turkey removed any restrictions from its
airspace for flights to and from Yerevan. The Embassies of Turkey
received permission to attend receptions organized by the Armenian
Embassies around the world.