Agence France Presse
April 5 2009

Armenia Foreign Minister To Visit Turkey This Week – Report

MOSCOW (AFP)–Armenia’s foreign minister will visit Turkey this week,
the Interfax news agency reported Sunday, in the latest sign of
thawing ties between the two countries after decades of bitter enmity.

Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian begins a two-day visit
Monday to attend a U.N. cultural forum in Istanbul, the news agency
said, citing the foreign ministry in Yerevan.

Officials from the two countries have stepped up contacts in recent
months, including Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and
Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian, who held a landmark bilateral
meeting in January.

Nalbandian visited Turkey last November.

Turkey and Armenia have no formal diplomatic ties and their border has
been closed for more than a decade amid deep differences over the
First World War massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire.

Armenia and a number of other countries have called the killings a
genocide, but Turkey rejects the label and disputes the number of
dead.