OBAMA URGES TURKEY AND ARMENIA TO NORMALISE TIES

Reuters
1/idUKTRE5355FQ20090406
April 6 2009
UK

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama urged the foreign
ministers of Turkey and Armenia during a meeting on Monday to
complete talks aimed at restoring ties between the two neighbours,
a U.S. official said.

Ankara and Yerevan are engaged in high-level negotiations to end
nearly a century of hostility, including the reopening of the border —
a move which could help shore up stability in the volatile Caucasus.

"On the margins of tonight’s Alliance of Civilisations dinner, the
president met the foreign ministers of Turkey, Armenia and Switzerland
to commend their efforts towards Turkish-Armenian normalisation
and to urge them to complete an agreement with dispatch," a senior
U.S. official told reporters in Istanbul.

The official was referring to a U.N.-backed conference in Istanbul
organised to discuss ways of building bridges between the Muslim
world and the West, which Obama attended on Monday as part of his
visit to Turkey.

Obama told reporters earlier in Ankara that he stood by his views
on mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915, which he has
termed genocide, but said he expected a breakthrough in talks between
Turkey and Armenia.

A breakthrough between Turkey and Armenia could help shore up
stability in the volatile Caucasus, criss-crossed by oil and gas
pipelines which make it of strategic importance to Russia, Europe
and the United States.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with
Azerbaijan, which was fighting Armenian-backed separatists over the
breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Obama has praised Turkey for its role in helping to work towards
a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which he said "has
continued for far too long."

Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman
Turks during World War One but strongly denies that up to 1.5 million
died as a result of genocide. (Reporting by Matt Spetalnick; writing
by Ibon Villelabeitia; Editing by Jon Boyle)