Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov has reviewed the Karabakh peace process and Turkish-Armenian rapprochement in an interview for CNN.
He said that Baku had not known about the start of the normalization process between Turkey and Armenia, 1news.az reported.
Armenia and Turkey signed protocols on opening their border and establishing diplomatic relations relations in Zurich in October 2009, but rapprochement stalled last year when neither parliament ratified the protocols. Turkish leaders say that progress cannot be made on rapprochement until Armenia withdraws its armed forces from Karabakh and the other occupied territories of Azerbaijan, something that Armenia says should not be linked to rapprochement.
Araz Azimov told CNN that Turkey had made a mistake in not coordinating the process with Azerbaijan.
"Had Azerbaijan known about the beginning of the normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey, the process could have been directed in a different way. Moreover, the agreements signed by Ankara and Yerevan in Zurich left talks on a settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict up a blind alley”.
Looking at the Karabakh talks process, Azimov said: "We should not expect progress on Nagorno Karabakh before 24 April or soon after."
On 24 April Armenia commemorates the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915-16, which Armenia says was genocide and Turkey insists was not.
Every year, the Armenian community in the USA lobbies for the US president to recognize the killings as genocide, something that no US president has done.
The deputy minister told CNN that the status of Nagorno-Karabakh remained the main stumbling block in the negotiations. Whenever Azerbaijan insists on the reintegration of Nagorno-Karabakh into Azerbaijan, Armenia opposes this and seeks its secession.
"In this situation, the successful completion of the negotiating process is not expected," Azimov said.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
