Apr

22

Washington Calling: US Vice-President phones Sargsyan to discuss Armenian-Turkish dialogue

Filed Under ArmeniaNow Weekly 

President Serzh Sargsyan had a telephone conversation with the Vice-President of the United States, Joe Biden, Monday, according to a report from his press office.

In a brief statement for media, the presidential press service mentioned that during the conversation initiated by the American side “the parties discussed issues related to the ongoing Armenia-Turkish political dialogue”.

No further information was reported or details revealed.

Last month Sargsyan discussed Armenian-Turkish rapprochement on the phone with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, several weeks before President Barack Obama’s visit to Turkey, amid growing hopes that Yerevan and Ankara were very close to signing a deal that would end decades of enmity and establish ties between the two neighbors.

Earlier this month, shortly after his two-day visit to Turkey, President Obama had a telephone conversation with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, who seemed increasingly unhappy with a Turkish-Armenian normalization that would not stipulate a pro-Azeri resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as one of its conditions. During that conversation, Obama reportedly underscored the importance of Turkish-Armenian reconciliation as he said it would “lead to greater peace and security in the region.”

The latest telephone conversation between Sargsyan and Biden comes at a time when the dialogue between Yerevan and Ankara appears to be in jeopardy following recent repeated statements by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan assuring Azerbaijan and nationalist forces in Turkey itself that no Turkish-Armenian normalization was possible before the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Meanwhile, official Yerevan, which had said Nagorno-Karabakh was not on the agenda of its nearly eight-month-long dialogue with Ankara, would not react to these statements.

A continuing search for ties between Yerevan and Ankara appeared to be one of the stated reasons why President Obama, while standing by his opinion about World War I-era killings of 1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, would not describe them as genocide while on a visit to Turkey and is expected by many to avoid this definition (despite his election campaign promise to the influential American-Armenian community) in his April 24 address.

By Suren Musayelyan
ArmeniaNow reporter
Source: http://www.armenianow.com

Permanent link:  http://www.armpress.com/armenianow/2009/04/22/1493/

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