Agence France Presse
April 9, 2010 Friday 2:43 PM GMT

Turkish envoy reassures Azerbaijan on Armenia deal: minister

BAKU, April 9 2010

A top Turkish diplomat has reassured Azerbaijan that Ankara will
continue to uphold Azerbaijani interests during its reconciliation
efforts with Armenia, Azerbaijan’s foreign minister said Friday.

Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said Turkish foreign ministry
undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioglu, who met with officials in Baku
Friday, assured Azerbaijan that Ankara’s position on the Nagorny
Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia remained unchanged.

"Ankara’s official position on the question of Armenian-Turkish
relations and resolving the Nagorny Karabakh conflict has not
changed," Mammadyarov told journalists in Baku.

Azerbaijan — linked to Turkey with close ethnic, political and
economic bonds — was angered by a historic deal Ankara and Yerevan
signed in October to end decades of hostility, establish diplomatic
ties and open their border, wary that Turkish support for its own
disputes with Armenia will now wane.

Ankara says progress over Nagorny-Karabakh will be a determining
factor in Turkish-Armenian reconciliation while Yerevan rejects any
link between the two issues.

Ankara sealed its border with Armenia in 1993 in a show of solidarity
with Baku after ethnic Armenian separatists, backed by Yerevan, seized
the Nagorny Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts from
Azerbaijan in a war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives.

Sinirlioglu’s mission to Baku follows his visit to Yerevan Wednesday,
during which he discussed steps to resolve the impasse in peace
efforts and secured agreement on a meeting next week between the two
countries’ leaders, on the sidelines of an international gathering in
Washington.

The reconciliation deal — comprised of two protocols which need
parliamentary ratification in both countries — has been snagged by
disagreements over its terms.