Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Dec 3 2008

Babacan to meet with Azerbaijani, Armenian foreign ministers

Foreign Minister Ali Babacan is scheduled to meet separately with his
counterparts from Azerbaijan and Armenia today in Helsinki on the
sidelines of a gathering of the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Officials say there is no formal decision to have three-way talks
similar to the one the three ministers had at this year’s UN General
Assembly in September, though observers still expect trilateral talks
today. In addition to separate talks with Babacan, Azerbaijani
Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and Armenian Foreign Minister
Edward Nalbandian are expected to have a bilateral
meeting. Representatives from Russia, France and the United States,
co-leaders of the OSCE’s Minsk Group, working for a peaceful
settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, will also be attending the
meeting.

The main item in the talks is the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, which
poisons not only Azerbaijani-Armenian ties but also relations between
Ankara and Yerevan. Turkey severed its diplomatic ties and closed its
border gate with Armenia in 1993 in protest of the occupation of
Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan by Armenian forces. Ankara is pursuing
a policy of rapprochement with Yerevan but the Nagorno-Karabakh
dispute is one of the main obstacles to reconciliation.

04 December 2008, Thursday
SERVET YANATMA HELSINKI