TURKEY’S PRECONDITIONS TO ARMENIA ARE POINTS OF ROAD-MAP: NAGORNY KARABAKH FOREIGN MINISTER

ArmInfo
2009-04-23 14:08:00

ArmInfo. All the preconditions of Turkey to Armenia are the points
of the road-map, the ex-foreign minister of the Nagorny Karabakh
Republic (NKR), ex-candidate for president of Armenia Armen Melikyan
told media Thursday.

‘I think the road-map is a declaration and it maybe compared
with Moscow Declaration signed in Maindorf last year. The only
difference is that this time the mediator is Switzerland instead of
Russia and the Armenian-Turkish relations are in question instead
of Armenian-Azerbaijani relations’, he said. He thinks the given
declaration is of moral nature and does not force any commitments on
the parties. ‘The problem of the Armenian-Turkish relations cannot be
settled overnight. There are too many reefs between these states. That
is why, the parties agreed on a certain situational way out i.e. the
document developed in Switzerland. However, it does not in favor of
Armenia. The country needs more substantial document’, he said.

To recall, the Armenian Foreign Ministry reported that Turkey and
Armenia, together with Switzerland as mediator, have been working
intensively with a view to normalizing their bilateral relations
and developing them in a spirit of good-neighborliness, and mutual
respect, and thus to promoting peace, security and stability in the
whole region.

The two parties have achieved tangible progress and mutual
understanding in this process and they have agreed on a comprehensive
framework for the normalization of their bilateral relations in a
mutually satisfactory manner. In this context, a road-map has been
identified.

This agreed basis provides a positive prospect for the on-going
process.

Turkey is known to make three preconditions for establishment of
bilateral relations with Armenia: Armenia’s refusal from the policy
towards international recognition of Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman
Empire; settlement of Karabakh conflict in favor of Azerbaijan;
ratification of the Kars Treaty.