CLINTON EXHORTS TURKEY, ARMENIA ON NORMALIZATION

New York Times
September 28, 2009

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged
Turkey and Armenia Monday to carry out their plans to normalise ties
soon during separate meetings with their foreign ministers.

Her comments appeared to reflect uncertainty about whether the
countries will stick to their plan to sign a pact restoring diplomatic
ties and reopening their border by mid-October.

Signing the deal would help to end almost a century of hostility
stemming from the World War One killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks.

Turkey rejects Armenian claims the killings, a defining element of
Armenian national identity, amount to genocide, and says many people
were killed on both sides of the conflict.

"I want to reiterate our very strong support for the normalization
process that is going on between Armenia and Turkey, which we have
long said should take place without preconditions and within a
reasonable timeframe," Clinton told reporters as she sat down with
Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian on the sidelines of the
U.N. General Assembly.

She later met Turkish Foreign Ahmet Davutoglu.

A U.S. official said Clinton does not want the signing to be disrupted
by Armenian nationalist demands that Turkey acknowledge the 1915
killings as genocide or by demands by some Turks for a resolution of
the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.

Turkey closed its frontier with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with
its Muslim ally Azerbaijan during the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, where
ethnic Armenians threw off Azeri rule with the backing of Armenia.

Armenia and Turkey on August 31 said they would sign accords within
six weeks to restore ties and reopen their border.