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Reuters: Turkey Eyes Azeri, Armenia Meeting On Karabakh

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  • Reuters: Turkey Eyes Azeri, Armenia Meeting On Karabakh

    TURKEY EYES AZERI, ARMENIA MEETING ON KARABAKH
    By Alexander Tanas

    Reuters
    Wed Oct 7, 2009 6:10pm EDT

    CHISINAU (Reuters) - The leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia hold
    talks in Moldova on Thursday that may bring progress in a years-long
    dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh and ease the way for restoring normal
    ties between Armenia and Turkey.

    Christian Armenia and Muslim Turkey are scheduled to sign an accord
    in Zurich on Saturday regularizing relations and ending a century
    of hostility.

    Such an agreement would bolster Turkey's credentials as a modernizer
    in the West, boost the poverty-stricken economy of landlocked Armenia
    and improve security in the South Caucasus, a key transit corridor
    for oil and gas supplies to the West.

    But analysts say much hinges on the outcome of Thursday's encounter
    in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau between Azeri President Ilham
    Aliyev and Armenia's Serzh Sarksyan on the emotive issue of the
    Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.

    Chances are slim that NATO member Turkey, an ally of fellow Muslim
    Azerbaijan, will open the border with Armenia by year-end unless
    there is real progress on the issue, analysts say.

    Violence erupted in the mountainous territory, an ethnic Armenian
    enclave located within Azerbaijan's internationally recognized borders,
    when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Nagorno-Karabakh declared
    independence.

    Ethnic Armenian forces, backed by Armenia, drove out Azeri forces
    and took control of seven districts of Azerbaijan adjacent to
    Nagorno-Karabakh. Some 30,000 people were killed in the war.

    The pace has quickened this year in internationally sponsored efforts
    to reach a peace deal, but each side faces difficulty in selling a
    deal at home.

    Neither Aliyev nor Sarksyan will want to risk losing face by appearing
    to have made concessions on what is a highly emotive issue.

    Sarksyan also has to contend with pressure from a vocal and powerful
    Armenian diaspora alert to any sign of weakness.

    DOUBTS EXPRESSED

    In Ankara, some doubts were expressed in diplomatic circles that the
    Zur well as opposition within Armenia and to a certain extent Turkey.

    Relations between Turkey and Armenia are bedeviled by World War One
    mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks. The two powers do not
    have diplomatic ties.

    The United States -- with Russia and France part of the so-called
    Minsk group leading negotiations on the Karabakh dispute -- will host
    Thursday's talks at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to Moldova,
    a U.S. embassy spokesman said.

    The meeting will take place at the margins of a summit of leaders
    of the Russia-led Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) of which
    Armenia and Azerbaijan are members.

    Most analysts cautioned against expectations of a breakthrough.

    Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with
    Azerbaijan, then at war with ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. It
    says ties with Armenia can not be normalized until there is progress
    in the dispute.

    Armenia insists the two issues are separate, but Azerbaijan is
    insistent that they are linked.

    (Additional reporting by Zerin Elci and Paul de Bendern in Ankara
    and by Hasmik Lazarian in Yerevan and Afet Mehtiyeva in Baku)

    (Writing by Richard Balmforth; Editing by Louise Ireland)

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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