The Armenian parliament will ratify the rapprochement protocols only after ratification in the Turkish parliament, according to Armenia’s speaker.
National Assembly Chairman Hovik Abrahamyan briefed a delegation from Egypt’s ARTOC Investment and Development Group yesterday.
’At the visitors’ request Abrahamyan touched upon ratification of the Armenian-Turkish protocols,’ the Armenian parliament’s news service reported.
In a veiled reference to Turkey’s insistence that the protocols can be ratified only if there is progress in settling the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, Abrahamyan said that the protocols should refer exclusively to establishing diplomatic relations and opening the border between the two countries.
’The speaker said that the Armenian parliament would ratify the Armenian-Turkish protocols only after their ratification in the Turkish parliament,’ the news service said.
The Armenian-Turkish border has been closed at the initiative of Ankara since 1993.
The Armenian-Turkish protocols were signed in Zurich on 10 October 2009 by the foreign ministers of Armenia and Turkey. The first protocol covers the opening of the Armenian-Turkish border and the normalization of relations, while the second envisages the establishment of a joint historical commission to investigate the events of 1915 in Ottoman Turkey. Turkish officials have said on many occasions that ratification of the protocols depends on progress in finding a settlement to the Karabakh conflict.
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