ARMENIA HALTS RATIFICATION OF TURKEY PEACE DEAL
Hasmik Lazarian
Reuters UK
0422?sp=true
April 22 2010
YEREVAN (Reuters) – Armenia’s ruling coalition said on Thursday it
had suspended the ratification in parliament of peace accords with
Turkey, dealing a blow to U.S.-backed efforts to bury a century of
hostility between the neighbours.
Christian Armenia and Muslim Turkey signed accords in October last year
to overcome the legacy of the World War One mass killing of Armenians
by Ottoman Turks, but the atmosphere has soured in recent months.
Under the accords, Armenia and Turkey agreed to establish diplomatic
ties and open the border within two months of parliamentary approval.
Neither parliament has approved the protocols, and Yerevan and Ankara
have accused each other of trying to re-write the texts.
"The Turkish side’s refusal to fulfil the requirement to ratify
the accord without preconditions in a reasonable time has made the
continuation of the ratification process in the national parliament
pointless," an Armenian coalition statement said.
"We consider it necessary to suspend this process until Turkey is
ready to continue the process without preconditions."
The coalition said it decided on the freeze after Turkish Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdogan said ratification would depend on a peace
deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkey’s close ally and trading
partner, over the disputed mountain region of Nagorno-Karabakh,
a position Yerevan sees as unacceptable.
In Ankara, a Foreign Ministry official said Turkey had not received
any official information about the suspension of the protocols’
ratification.
Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan, who faces resistance from opponents
at home and the huge Armenian diaspora abroad, was due to make a
statement on national television later on Thursday.
Erdogan, who also faces stiff opposition from nationalists at home,
was due to hold a news conference later on Thursday.
Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama urged Armenia and Turkey to
"make every effort" to advance normalisation, which would boost
stability in the volatile south Caucasus, a region criss-crossed by
pipelines carrying oil and gas to the West.
Obama will make a speech on the mass killings of Armenians on April
24, the 95th anniversary of the events, and was expected to address
progress on the accords.
NAGORNO-KARABAGH
Turkey has demanded that ethnic Armenian forces pull back from the
frontlines of Nagorno-Karabakh as a condition for ratifying the peace
deal. This aroused resistance in Armenia.
The Turkish condition is aimed at placating close Muslim ally
Azerbaijan, an oil and gas exporter which lost control over
Nagorno-Karabakh when ethnic Armenians backed by Christian Armenia
broke away as the Soviet Union collapsed.
Semih Idiz, a foreign affairs columnist for Turkey’s Milliyet
newspaper, told CNN Turk the Armenian decision was meant to put
pressure on Erdogan ahead of April 24, when Armenians will again press
Obama to fulfil a campaign pledge to label the killings as genocide.
"There’s nothing to upset Ankara too much. This does not mean the
process is over…This is a personal call to Erdogan, since he made
the Nagorno-Karabakh precondition," Idiz said.
If ratified, the deal, signed with endorsement of the U.S., European
Union and Russia, would bring economic gains to poor, landlocked
Armenia. It would help Turkey burnish its credentials as a EU candidate
and boost its clout in the Caucasus.
The deal is the closest the sides have come to overcoming the legacy
of the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War
One, a defining element of Armenian national identity and a constant
thorn in the side of modern Turkey.
Muslim Turkey accepts many Christian Armenians died in partisan
fighting beginning in 1915 but denies that up to 1.5 million were
killed and that it amounted to genocide — a term employed by some
Western historians and foreign parliaments.
(Additional reporting by Ibon Villelabeitia and Tulay Karadeniz in
Ankara and Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul; Writing by Ibon Villelabeitia
and Conor Humphries; Editing by Diana Abdallah)
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
