TURKISH, ARMENIAN LEADERS MEET IN WASHINGTON AS NORMALIZATION MOVE STALLS

Xinhua General News Service
April 12, 2010 Monday 11:40 AM EST
China

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Armenian President
Serzh Sargsyan in Washington D.C. on Monday as the two countries’
efforts to normalize relations hit snags, Turkish media reported.

The two leaders got together on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security
Summit, which is scheduled to be held from April 12 to 13, said the
semi-official Anatolia news agency.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his Armenian counterpart
Edward Nalbandian as well as other senior officials also attended the
Erdogan-Sargsyan meeting, the agency quoted diplomats as saying. It
did not disclose the topics of the talks.

Turkey and Armenia signed protocols to normalize relations and open
long-sealed borders last October but the move has stalled since then.

It suffered a further blow after a U.S. congressional panel and
the Swedish parliament last month passed resolutions that recognize
killings of Armenians under Ottoman rule during the World War I as
"genocide."

A senior Turkish diplomat brought a letter from Erdogan to Sargsyan
last week, in which Erdogan called on Sargsyan to fulfill obligations
in the normalization bid, Turkish media reported.

Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic or economic ties and are
bogged down in a long-time row over the World War I-era killings of
Armenians, which Armenia brands as a genocide. Turkey strongly denies
that and has argued the Armenians were victims of widespread chaos
and governmental breakdown as the Ottoman Empire collapsed before
modern Turkey was founded in 1923.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 to support Azerbaijan,
which had a territorial conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh
region. Ankara has said the border could be opened only after the
withdrawal of Armenian troops from the disputed land.