ARMENIAN DIPLOMACY NOT TO ALLOW TURKEY TO TAKE BROKER’S ROLE IN KARABAKH PROCESS

PanARMENIAN.Net
13.01.2010 20:44 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkey will make every possible effort to intervene
in Karabakh settlement process, but Armenian diplomacy should do its
best to prevent that, political scientist, YSU Professor Alexander
Manasyan finds.

"Armenian-Turkish relations concern only two states. Of course,
Turkey will try to get advantage of Protocols, but we must not allow
that to happen," he told today a news conference in Yerevan.

At that, he expressed belief that there will be no final document on
Karabakh by 2010.

The Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR) is a de facto independent state
located in the South Caucasus, bordering on Azerbaijan to the north
and east, Iran to the south, and Armenia to the west.

After the Soviet Union established control over the area, in 1923
it formed the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) within the
Azerbaijan SSR. In the final years of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan
launched an ethnic cleansing which resulted in the Karabakh War that
was fought from 1991 to 1994.

Since the ceasefire in 1994, most of Nagorno Karabakh and several
regions of Azerbaijan around it (the security zone) remain under the
control of Nagorno Karabakh defense army.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have since been holding peace talks mediated
by the OSCE Minsk Group.

The protocols aimed at normalization of bilateral ties and opening of
the common border between Armenia and Turkey were signed in Zurich
by Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian and his Turkish
counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu on October 10, 2009, after a series of
diplomatic talks held through Swiss mediation.