ARMENIA, TURKEY TO RE-OPEN BORDER

ABC Online
01/2672903.htm?section=justin
Sept 1 2009
Australia

Armenia and Turkey have agreed on a plan to establish diplomatic
ties and re-open their border, seeking to end decades of distrust
and resentment on both sides.

The two countries have no diplomatic relations, a closed frontier and
a long history of hostility rooted in massacres of Armenians under
the Ottoman Turks during World War I.

The two countries said they would hold six weeks of domestic
consultations before signing two protocols on establishing diplomatic
ties and developing bilateral relations.

"The political consultations will be completed within six weeks,
following which the two protocols will be signed and submitted to
the respective parliaments for ratification," the countries’ foreign
ministries said in a joint statement with mediator Switzerland.

According to copies of the protocols released by the Armenian foreign
ministry, the two countries have agreed to re-open their common border
"within two months" of the deal taking effect.

The agreement also calls for the creation of a joint commission
to examine the "historical dimension" of their disagreements,
"including an impartial scientific examination of the historical
records and archives".

The two countries said in April that they had agreed to a road map
for normalising diplomatic ties after years of enmity.

Turkey has long refused to establish diplomatic links with Armenia over
Yerevan’s efforts to have World War I-era massacres of Armenians by
Ottoman Turks recognised as genocide – a label Turkey strongly rejects.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin were systematically killed
between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire, Turkey’s predecessor,
was falling apart.

Turkey categorically rejects the genocide label and says between
300,000 and 500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil
strife when Armenians took up arms in eastern Anatolia and sided with
invading Russian troops.