ARMENIA TO SEND PROTOCOLS WITH TURKEY TO PARLIAMENT

Today’s Zaman
Feb 11 2010
Turkey

Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan on Wednesday said he will submit
protocols signed by Turkey and Armenia for the normalization of
bilateral relations between the two estranged neighbors to the Armenian
parliament for ratification. He said, however, that he expected Turkey
to ratify and start implementing the protocols before Armenia.

Speaking during a working visit to London, Sarksyan also dismissed
Ankara’s negative reaction to a ruling of the Armenian constitutional
court last month on the two protocols.

"After this meeting at Chatham House, I intend to instruct my personnel
to send these documents to Armenia’s National Assembly to start the
ratification process," he said in a speech at the Royal Institute
of International Affairs, a London-based think tank also known as
Chatham House.

"I reaffirm that as the political leader of the [Armenian]
parliamentary majority, I exclude [the possibility of] a failure by
Armenia’s parliament to ratify the protocols in the event of their
ratification by Turkey without preconditions in accordance with our
understandings," he said.