Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday called on Armenia and Turkey to move forward quickly on stalled efforts to ratify a landmark deal to establish full diplomatic relations.

“We are interested in ties being normalized…. The quicker this happens, the better it is for the entire region,” Lavrov said during a joint press conference with his Armenian counterpart Edward Nalbandian.

Lavrov said Russia was ready to assist both countries with infrastructure projects, including electricity and rail links, once they agree to establish ties and open their border.

He also backed the Armenian stance on the territorial dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh and rejected any links between the normalization process and the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, a Turkish ally, over the breakaway region.

“We see no connections between the process of normalizing Turkish-Armenian relations and resolving Nagorno-Karabakh,” Lavrov said. “In my opinion, it is not correct to try to artificially link these two processes.”

Historic deals

Turkey and Armenia signed two protocols in October to establish diplomatic ties and reopen their shared border, a move hailed as a historic step toward ending decades of hostility stemming from the World War I-era killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

But Armenia has expressed growing frustration in recent weeks over the Turkish Parliament’s failure to ratify the protocols. The Armenian parliament has not yet done so either.

Turkish officials have repeatedly said the agreements will not be ratified without progress in the dispute over Karabakh. Backed by Yerevan, ethnic Armenian separatists seized control of Karabakh and seven surrounding districts from Azerbaijan during a war in the early 1990s that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in a show of solidarity with Azerbaijan – with which it has strong ethnic, trade and energy links – against Yerevan’s support for the enclave’s separatists.

Source: Hurriyet Daily News
URL: www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=russia-urges-armenia-turkey-to-move-quickly-on-ties-2010-01-14