U.S. ASSISTANT SEC ON KARABAKH, ARMENIAN-TURKISH PROCESSES
News.am
13:35 / 09/30/2009
At a recent briefing at the UN General Assembly, Philip H. Gordon
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, summed
up the meetings U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had with the
Armenian, Turkish and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers.
"It was on Friday that the Secretary met with Foreign Minister
Mammadyarov of Azerbaijan. She underscored the United States continued
strong support for the Nagorno-Karabakh process. Also in the meeting
was our new Minsk Group co-chair – that is to say, representative to
those talks Ambassador Robert Bradtke, a highly experienced diplomat
whose designation in this job underscores how keen we are to see
progress on that front. The Secretary also raised the important
questions of human rights and democracy in Azerbaijan, including the
case of the bloggers who were recently beaten up and arrested….
"This morning, she met with Armenian Foreign Minister Nalbandian and
she stressed our very strong support for the continued Turkey-Armenia
normalization process. She made clear that, for the United States, that
is a process that should move forward without preconditions and within
a reasonable timeframe. She also raised the issue of democratization
in Armenia. She welcomed the government’s recent release of political
prisoners and underscored that that’s an important issue to the United
States and it would facilitate our full partnership…
"Meeting with the Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu just now; the
Secretary and the foreign minister discussed a very wide range of
issues. The U.S.-Turkish partnership is characterized by its depth
and its breadth, and so the ministers, I think, reflecting that,
talked about Turkey-Armenia, and again, she stressed our support for
that process.
They talked about Cyprus, energy security, Afghanistan-Pakistan,
Iran, Middle East peace, and probably some other issues…"
Philip Gordon then answered journalists’ questions. As r Armenia-Turkey
normalization process, he said that "we’re leaving – this is a
Swiss-mediated process between Turkey and Armenia, and it’s for them
to announce details on signings and so on."
As regards the "reasonable timeframe", Gordon said "this is a difficult
process that faces some political opposition in both places…And
so when we say reasonable timeframe, we mean…it’s not just the
process that we want to see…but we also want to see a conclusion
to the process…"
Asked to "spell out preconditions", namely "that the Armenians don’t
stipulate that the Turks recognize the genocide," Gordon said that
"no preconditions means no preconditions on either side. There
are lots of things that one could try to link this process to,
and what we are saying is that the process is inherently valuable,
that we think that Turkey-Armenian normalization is a good thing,
and it shouldn’t wait for other things to get done or be linked to
other things; it should go ahead…Armenia, without an open border
with Turkey, is isolated. We saw during the war in Georgia in August
2008 that it could be even further isolated when negative things
happen in the region. And a normal relationship with Turkey would
really be a historic development that would benefit the people of
both countries today…I mentioned in the context of the Secretary’s
meeting with the Azerbaijani foreign minister the Nagorno-Karabakh
process… If we could succeed on these multiple tracks, we would
really take a major step towards peace and stability in the Caucasus,
energy corridor across the Caucasus, and prosperity in the region…"