Armenia ready to establish relations with Turkey – presidential aide

Armenia ready to establish relations with Turkey – presidential aide

ITAR-TASS news agency, Moscow
1 Sep 05

Yerevan, 1 September: Armenia is ready to establish diplomatic
relations with Turkey without any preliminary conditions, the press
secretary of the Armenian president, Viktor Sogomonyan, said today.

“Armenia’s position is unchangeable – we are ready to start a
constructive dialogue with Turkey at any time and establish diplomatic
relations without any preliminary conditions,” he said at a news
conference, adding that these issues were recently touched upon in
correspondence between the Armenian and Turkish leaders.

“Yerevan highly rates the fact that Moscow and Ankara are strengthening
the dialogue and deepening cooperation and security,” the Armenian
president’s press secretary said.

“Taking into consideration the context of strategic relations
between Armenia and Russia, we think that the practical deepening of
cooperation between Moscow and Ankara can also be a certain mediatory
resource for us in solving our problems,” Sogomonyan said.

Having a common border of 330 km, Armenia and Turkey have not
established diplomatic relations up till now. As a condition for
normalizing bilateral relations, Ankara is demanding that Yerevan give
up on the international recognition of the 1915 Armenian genocide
in the Ottoman Empire and stop supporting Nagornyy Karabakh in its
conflict with Azerbaijan.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress