ARMENIA BLAMES TURKEY FOR DELAYING VOTE ON DEAL TO OPEN BORDER
By Helena Bedwell and Steve Bryant

Business Week
Jan 22 2010

Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — Armenia said Turkey’s government will be to
blame if the Turkish parliament delays a vote on a treaty to re-open
their common border, as a dispute over ratification threatens to
derail the agreement.

"Armenia will take appropriate measures if Turkey refuses to act on the
treaty in time or deliberately delays," Nairi Petrosyan, a spokesman
for Armenia’s National Assembly said in a telephone interview from
Yerevan. "This was agreed from the beginning when the sides met in
Geneva on signing the accord."

The two nations agreed Oct. 10 to re-establish ties and open their
border within two months of ratification. Armenia expects the step
to boost the country’s economy. Relations have been frozen since
Turkey closed the border in 1993 to protest Armenia’s occupation of
the Nagorno-Karabakh region in Azerbaijan, a key Turkish ally and
energy supplier.

Two days ago, Turkey accused the Armenian Constitutional Court, which
approved the accord last week, of adding conditions to the treaty
that distort the text agreed on last year relating to a commission to
investigate the killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in World War
I. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the ratification
process would stall unless the court revises its ruling.

Armenian opposition politicians are concerned the treaty may lead to
compromises with Azerbaijan on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh as well
as on Armenia’s demand that Turkey recognize the massacres as genocide.

‘New Ball Game’

Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Burak Ozugergin rejected accusations
of delay, while reiterating the Turkish view that the court had
changed the text of the treaty.

"Turkey does not accept accusations that it’s delaying," he said in
a telephone interview from Ankara yesterday. Unless Armenia takes
action to change the court decision, "it would not be the same text,
it would be a whole new ball game."

In the Oct. 10 agreement, Turkey and Armenia pledged to set up a joint
commission of historians to investigate the massacres, recognized
by France and other countries as genocide. Armenia says as many as
1.5 million people were systematically killed. Turkey cites a lower
figure and says the deaths were the result of civil strife in which
many Turks were also killed.

Petrosyan said Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has not forwarded
the treaty to the National Assembly for ratification yet. Samvel
Farmanyan, a spokesman for Sargsyan, said by phone that "no text has
been changed."

"It’s clear by the rhetoric coming out of Ankara and Yerevan that
the agreements are in trouble," Lawrence Sheets, senior analyst
and Caucasus program director with the International Crisis Group,
said by e-mail from Tbilisi. "If Turkey and Armenia fail to establish
relations, the peace process regarding Nagorno-Karabakh will also be
in trouble, with potentially disastrous consequences down the road,
given the saber-rattling going on about a new war".

The government of Armenia, a landlocked country of 3.2 million people,
estimates opening the border will increase foreign investment by
50 percent.

Farmanyan said the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan plan to meet
in Sochi, Russia, on Jan. 25 to discuss Nagorno- Karabakh.

–Editors: Eddie Buckle, Leon Mangasarian

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