PUTIN: KARABAKH SETTLEMENT AND ARMENIAN-TURKISH RECONCILIATION SHOULD NOT BE "TIED IN ONE PACKAGE"

PanARMENIAN.Net
14.01.2010 11:20 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkey should not link the normalization of its
relations with Armenia to further progress in international efforts
to resolve the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Russian Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday, RFE/RL reported.

Putin also reaffirmed Moscow’s support for Turkey’s dramatic
rapprochement with Armenia, his country’s main regional ally, after
talks with his visiting Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"We receive with great optimism Turkish proposals on the
normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations," he told a joint news
conference. "We very much hope all elements of shortest approaches
[to the normalization] will be used in the negotiating process and
Armenia’s leadership is also on this positive path."

Putin made clear that Moscow believes the two issues should not
be "tied in one package." "It is difficult to solve each of these
problems separately, and if one tackles them in a single package,
then prospects for their settlement will automatically become very
remote," he said. "Packaging these problems is not quite right from
the practical and strategic standpoints."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was among foreign dignitaries
that attended the signing in Zurich last October of two protocols
envisaging the establishment of diplomatic relations between Armenia
and Turkey and the opening of their border.

The Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR) is a de facto independent republic
located in the South Caucasus, bordering by 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.