ARMENIAN, TURKISH LEADERS TO PUSH TIES IN U.S. MEET
By Hasmik Lazarian and Tulay Karadeniz
Washington Post
April 8 2010
YEREVAN/ANKARA (Reuters) – The leaders of Armenia and Turkey plan
to meet in the United States next week in a move to breathe new life
into efforts to bury a century of hostility and open their border.
Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan will meet Turkey’s Prime Minister
Tayyip Erdogan on the sidelines of nuclear security summit in
Washington, an Armenian spokesman said Thursday.
Armenia and Turkey signed accords in October last year designed to
overcome the legacy of the World War One mass killing of Armenians
by Ottoman Turks.
Last week, Erdogan said Turkey was returning its ambassador to the
United States, having withdrawn him a month earlier in protest against
a U.S. congressional committee labeling the killings as genocide.
Addressing a news conference in Ankara, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu made no mention of the coming meeting in Washington but said
he believed the two countries would overcome their difficulties soon.
"In the following weeks, we hope to normalize Turkish- Armenian
relations by pursuing the process in the right direction and in its
own nature," Davutoglu said.
Under the accords, Armenia and Turkey agreed to establish diplomatic
ties and open the border within two months of parliamentary approval.
But the atmosphere has soured in the past few months, raising doubt
over when they would be ratified.
Sarksyan said recently the Armenian parliament would ratify accords
just after the Turkish parliament.
The deal would bring big economic gains to poor, landlocked Armenia.
Turkey would burnish its credentials as a potential EU entry state
and boost its clout in the South Caucasus, a region criss-crossed by
pipelines carrying oil and gas to the West.
The protocols face opposition from Turkey’s fellow-Muslim ally
Azerbaijan, which wants to see progress over its breakaway region
of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijan, an oil and gas exporter, lost control over Nagorno-Karabakh
when Christian ethnic Armenians backed by Armenia broke away as the
Soviet Union collapsed.
Davutoglu also said a senior Turkish diplomat would carry a message
from Erdogan for Azeri President Ilham Aliyev Friday.
Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek staked out the government’s
position in an interview with Reuters Wednesday.
Turkey wants Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabkh to pull back from
frontlines.
It also wants Armenia to correct a ruling by its Constitutional Court,
which in January had endorsed the protocols but added that state
had a duty to pursue international recognition of the killings of
Armenians in 1915 as genocide.