ARMENIA HALTS DEAL ON TURKEY TIES

europe/8636800.stm
Published: 2010/04/22 11:12:13 GMT

Armenia’s ruling coalition has said it is halting the ratification
in parliament of landmark accords on normalising relations with Turkey.

It said it was because of Turkey’s refusal to "ratify the protocols
without preconditions", chiefly over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The countries signed a historic deal in 2009 to re-establish diplomatic
ties.

There had been a century of hostility following the World War I mass
killings of Armenians.

MASS KILLINGS OF ARMENIANS

Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians killed by Ottoman Turks
in 1915-6 Many historians and the Armenian people believe the
killings amount to genocide Turks and some historians deny they were
orchestrated More than 20 countries regard the massacres as genocide

Diplomatic moves to normalise relations have faltered recently.

The Armenian coalition decided to halt the ratification process of
the accord signed in October last year after Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan said it would depend on a peace deal over
Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian statement said.

"Considering the Turkish side’s refusal to fulfil the requirement
to ratify the accord without preconditions in a reasonable time,
making the continuation of the ratification process in the national
parliament pointless, we consider it necessary to suspend this
process," the statement said.

"The political majority in the national assembly considers statements
from the Turkish side in recent days as unacceptable, specifically
those by Prime Minister Erdogan, who has again made the ratification
of the Armenia-Turkish protocols by the Turkish parliament directly
dependent on a resolution over Nagorno-Karabakh," it said.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 to protest against
Armenia’s war with its neighbour Azerbaijan over the enclave, which
is within Azerbaijan but under the control of ethnic Armenian forces.

Thousands of people lost their lives in a conflict that erupted after
the break-up of the Soviet Union.

A fragile ceasefire was signed in 1994 leaving Karabakh under de
facto ethnic Armenian control.

In October last year, Turkey and Armenia signed a historic accord
normalising relations despite differences over the World War I mass
killings of Armenians.

Armenia wants Turkey to recognise the killings as an act of genocide,
but successive Turkish governments have refused to do so.

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in 1915, when they were
deported en masse from eastern Anatolia by the Ottoman Empire.

They were killed by troops or died from starvation and disease.