ARMENIA FOREIGN MINISTER TO VISIT TURKEY AMID THAW: REPORT

Agence France Presse
April 5, 2009 Sunday 12:54 PM GMT

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
on Monday to attend a United Nations 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 World War I 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.