PAPANDREOU PRAISES ARMENIA, TURKEY FOR PEACE EFFORTS

Today’s Zaman
Dec 2 2009
Turkey

Armenia and Turkey’s efforts to normalize their relations should
encourage other countries in the region to take similar actions in
order contribute to regional security, Greek Prime Minister George
Papandreou said in Athens on Tuesday at a meeting of the 56-nation
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

The foreign policy chiefs of 56 OSCE members, including Turkey’s
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, were trying to agree on a rare
political declaration on a common security structure. If an agreement
can be reached, it would be the first time since 2002 that the OSCE
has settled on a common political declaration.

Papandreou asked those attending to take Turkey and Armenia as an
example for the OSCE. The two countries ended a century of hostility
earlier this year by agreeing to establish diplomatic relations. "The
bold decision taken by Turkey and Armenia has not been easy but
they have been important. We must now take this same spirit of
reconciliation to the unresolved conflicts that persist in the OSCE
area," Papandreou said.

Also in Athens, the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan were
expected to hold a meeting with the French, Russian and American
co-chairs of the OSCE’s Minsk Group, which has striven for 17 years
to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, a territorial dispute between
Baku and Yerevan.