Ekho Moskvy radio, Russia
April 22 2010
Talks between Armenia, Turkey unlikely to resume soon
[Presenter] Armenia is halting the process of settling relations with
Turkey. There is no talk yet of withdrawing from the process, Armenian
President Serzh Sargsyan has announced. He promised to return to the
subject of settlement when Yerevan sees that Ankara is expressing the
same readiness for the normalization of relations.
Negotiations between Armenia and Turkey have virtually returned to
their starting point and are unlikely to resume in the near future,
editor-in-chief of the Russia in Global Politics magazine Fedor
Lukyanov believes. In his opinion, the process of restoring contact
between Yerevan and Ankara rests on the problem of relations between
Turkey and Azerbaijan.
[Lukyanov] Azerbaijan suspected that Turkey simply wants to betray its
strategic ally and the Turks realized that further progress is indeed
fraught with a radical deterioration in relations with Azerbaijan,
which Turkey cannot afford either for cultural and historical or for
economic and energy reasons. Therefore everything is at a standstill.
The [Nagornyy] Karabakh settlement process is not moving forward and
until some progress on Karabakh takes place, there is no expecting
that Turkey will fulfil its obligations on protocols and unblocks the
border with Armenia.
[translated from Russian]