CLINTON, SARKISIAN IN ANOTHER PHONE CALL ON TURKEY
sarkisian-in-another-phone-call-on-turkey/
Sep 22, 2009
WASHINGTON-YEREVAN (RFE/RL)-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
telephoned President Serzh Sarkisian at the weekend to again discuss
Armenia’s ongoing rapprochement with Turkey facilitated by the
United States.
A one-sentence statement issued by Sarkisian’s office on Sunday
said the two touched upon "issues related to the current stage of
the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations. It gave no other
details. There was no word on the conversation, the second in a month,
from the U.S. State Department.
Clinton has regularly talked to Armenian and Turkish leaders this year
in an effort to push forward their fence-mending negotiations. Her
previous phone call with Sarkisian was reported on September 21,
ten days before the publication of two draft agreements envisaging
the establishment of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkish
and reopening of their border.
Their latest conversation came the day after official Yerevan accused
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of acting against "the
letter, spirit and aims" of those agreements. Erdogan reportedly
stated on Friday that Turkey will not reopen the Armenian border as
long as the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains unresolved.
In a late-night statement, Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian warned
that Ankara risks "ruining" the Turkish-Armenian dialogue by again
linking it to the Karabakh peace process.
Although the protocols unveiled by the two governments on August 31
makes no direct reference to the conflict, certain points within the
document put Armenia on record as supporting the territorial integrity
of its neighbors, preclude it from "interfering" in the internal
affairs of neighboring countries such as Azerbaijan, and prohibit it
from serving as the guarantor of Artsakh’s independence. The State
Department was quick to welcome those documents and urge Ankara and
Yerevan to "proceed expeditiously" in implementing them.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
