US URGES PROGRESS ON ARMENIA-TURKEY DEAL
Hurriyet
Feb 5 2010
Turkey
A senior U.S. diplomat has urged Armenia and Turkey to waste no more
time in moving forward on stalled efforts to establish ties and open
their border after decades of hostility.
"I very much hope that both Armenia and Turkey will move forward. I
don’t think delay is in anybody’s interests," U.S. Deputy Secretary
of State James Steinberg said Friday during a visit to the Caucasus
region.
Steinberg met with Armenian President Serge Sarkisian on Thursday and
was expected to meet Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Turkish
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu at a weekend security conference in
Munich, Germany. Davutoglu, who was in Germany on Friday to attend
the 46th Security Conference, had a closed-door meeting with Aliyev
at Munich’s Kempinski Hotel.
Speaking to reporters in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, Steinberg
said he had "extremely productive and substantive discussions" with
Sarkisian in Armenia and that he would speak with Davutoglu about
how to move swiftly forward.
"There’s a very strong commitment on behalf of the United States to
work with Armenia and Turkey to see the ratification of the protocols,"
he said.
Diplomatic protocols
Turkey and Armenia signed two protocols in October to establish
diplomatic ties and reopen their shared border, in a historic step
toward ending decades of hostility stemming from World War I-era
killings of Armenians during the late days of the Ottoman Empire.
The protocols must now be ratified by both countries’ parliaments,
but the process has stalled as the two sides have traded accusations
of trying to modify the landmark deal.
Ankara has accused Yerevan of trying to set new conditions after
Armenia’s constitutional court said the protocols could not contradict
Yerevan’s official position that the Armenian mass killings constituted
"genocide" – a label Turkey fiercely rejects.
Armenia, for its part, is furious over Ankara’s insistence that
normalizing Turkish-Armenian ties depends on progress between Armenia
and Turkish ally Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with
Azerbaijan after ethnic Armenian forces occupied Karabakh in a war
that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives.
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Compiled from AFP and AA stories by the Daily News staff.