ARMENIA’S PARLIAMENT PANEL TO DEBATE ‘NORMALIZATION’ PROTOCOLS

Today’s Zaman
Feb 19 2010
Turkey

The Armenian National Assembly’s external relations committee is
scheduled to hold a debate today on two protocols signed with Turkey
which aim to bury a century of hostility between the two countries.

"We offered the parliament speaker [the chance] to develop a procedure
of preliminary discussions," Armen Rustamyan, the chairman of the
committee, was quoted as saying on Thursday by an Armenia-based
English-language online news portal, PanArmenian.net.

"According to the NA [National Assembly] charter, international
agreements are included in the agenda and then debated during the
parliamentary session," Rustamyan said, while underlining that the
committee debate will be completely transparent.

Rustamyan also stated that the nationalist Armenian Revolutionary
Federation (ARF, Dashnaktsutiun) will support the ratification of
the protocols only if certain conditions are included in the protocols.

The ARF earlier threatened to attempt to depose President Serzh
Sarksyan if the protocols are ratified by the Armenian parliament.

The normalization process has been thrown into question by the weight
of still-unresolved disputes four months after Turkey and Armenia
signed the two protocols to establish diplomatic ties and open their
mutual border.

Ankara and Yerevan have accused each other of trying to rewrite the
texts, which are the closest the two sides have come to overcoming
the legacy of the killings of Anatolian Armenians during World War I.