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 ANKARA
(Reuters)–Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday
sought again to link the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Ankara’s
negotiations with Armenia to normalize relations, urging
international mediators to speed up efforts to quickly resolve
the conflict.
Talks on the future of
Nagorno-Karabakh have been dragging on for more than a decade
under the auspices of the Minsk Group linking Russia, France and
the United States. Turkey has said it hopes to open its border
with Armenia by the end of the year under a protocol to
establish diplomatic ties, but it maintains that further
progress has been hampered in the past by the frozen
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
“Erdogan said the Minsk
group that is co-presided by the U.S. has an important role in
contributing to the improvement of the relations with Armenia
and asked the group to increase their efforts,” Anatolian news
agency quoted him as saying.
Erdogan made his comments
in New York, where he traveled to attend the U.N. General
Assembly. Turkish newspapers have reported that Turkey’s Foreign
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will meet his Armenian counterpart on
the sidelines of the gathering.
Anticipation over an
Ankara-Yerevan thaw has been growing ahead of a planned visit by
Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian to Turkey on October 14, when
he is due to attend the return leg of a World Cup qualifying
football match between the two countries.
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