‘ANKARA NOT PART OF CAUCASUS DEAL’

Hurriyet
Feb 12 2009
Turkey

ANKARA – Turkey is not part of a plan for a settlement to the dispute
over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani territory occupied by Armenia,
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said yesterday.

"The Nagorno-Karabakh problem concerns Turkey but Turkey’s involvement
in a plan for a solution is not under consideration. We only receive
information from the parties concerned," Foreign Ministry spokesman
Burak Ozugergin was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.

His remarks came after daily Hurriyet published an article that
revealed a number of settlement areas would be handed over to
Azerbaijan under a reconciliation plan on the Nagorno-Karabakh
problem discussed between Foreign Minister Ali Babacan and Armenian
and Azerbaijani officials. Babacan held talks with his Armenian
counterpart as well as the Armenian president on the sidelines of
a security conference in Munich over the weekend and flew to Baku
for further consultations with his Azerbaijani counterpart and the
Azerbaijani president. On route to Baku, Babacan revised the latest
stage of the talks with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Memmedyarov,
with whom he was on the same plane.

Following the diplomacy traffic on the Munich-Baku track, Armenia was
reported to be looking warmly toward the handover of six settlement
areas densely populated by the Azeris to Azerbaijan stage by stage,
said the daily.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry denied the report and said it had not
conducted negotiations for a settlement with Turkey’s mediation. Tigran
Balaian, spokesman for the ministry, said negotiations had been
conducted through the mediation of the Organization for Security and
Cooperation Group’s Minsk Group based on the Madrid proposals.