RUSSIA URGES ARMENIA, TURKEY TO MOVE QUICKLY ON TIES

Hurriyet
Jan 14 2010
Turkey

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. AP photo

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday called on Armenia
and Turkey to move forward quickly on stalled efforts to ratify a
landmark deal to establish full diplomatic relations.

"We are interested in ties being normalized…. The quicker this
happens, the better it is for the entire region," Lavrov said during a
joint press conference with his Armenian counterpart Edward Nalbandian.

Lavrov said Russia was ready to assist both countries with
infrastructure projects, including electricity and rail links, once
they agree to establish ties and open their border.

He also backed the Armenian stance on the territorial dispute over
Nagorno-Karabakh and rejected any links between the normalization
process and the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, a Turkish ally,
over the breakaway region.

"We see no connections between the process of normalizing
Turkish-Armenian relations and resolving Nagorno-Karabakh," Lavrov
said. "In my opinion, it is not correct to try to artificially link
these two processes."

Historic deals

Turkey and Armenia signed two protocols in October to establish
diplomatic ties and reopen their shared border, a move hailed as a
historic step toward ending decades of hostility stemming from the
World War I-era killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

But Armenia has expressed growing frustration in recent weeks over
the Turkish Parliament’s failure to ratify the protocols. The Armenian
parliament has not yet done so either.

Turkish officials have repeatedly said the agreements will not be
ratified without progress in the dispute over Karabakh. Backed by
Yerevan, ethnic Armenian separatists seized control of Karabakh and
seven surrounding districts from Azerbaijan during a war in the early
1990s that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in a show of solidarity
with Azerbaijan – with which it has strong ethnic, trade and energy
links – against Yerevan’s support for the enclave’s separatists.