ANKARA: Turkish premier says no plan to meet Armenian president

Turkish premier says no plan to meet Armenian president

Anatolia news agency
16 May 05

Warsaw/Ankara, 16 May: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
said late on Sunday [15 May] that he had no appointment with Armenian
President Robert Kocharyan.

Erdogan, who is currently in Polish capital of Warsaw to attend the
summit of Council of Europe (COE) heads of state and government,
met Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who earlier met Kocharyan on
the margin of this summit.

Regarding the Nagornyy Karabakh dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan,
Erdogan said: “We are carefully monitoring steps for resolution of this
problem. We hope that problems would be overcome as soon as possible,
and peace would be settled in our region.”

Asked if he would take a step for resolution of Nagornyy Karabakh
dispute by meeting Kocharyan, Erdogan said: “We don’t have a scheduled
meeting.”

On the other hand, Aliyev said that two countries (Turkey and
Azerbaijan) would continue to support each other.

Asked if he saw any milder attitude from Armenia for solution of this
dispute, Aliyev said: “This matter has been discussed for years,
and so we have decided not to talk on this matter before we make a
real progress. I hope negotiations will bear positive result and our
problems will be solved.” [Passage omitted]