Сегодня в Москве состоится встреча президентов Армении С. Саргсяна и Азербайджана И. Алиева по урегулированию Карабахского конфликта.
Будем надеется, что на этот раз наши президенты сделают конкретные шаги и будет виден прогресс в этом вопросе.

After months of upbeat statements, President Serzh Sarkisian signaled on Monday his frustration with Turkey’s failure so far to unconditionally normalize relations with Armenia despite concessions made by him.

“We want to eliminate closed borders remaining in Europe and to build normal relationships without preconditions,” he said, commenting on Turkish-Armenian relations after talks with the visiting President Demetris Christofias of Cyprus. “But in that endeavor, we do not intend to allow [anyone] to use the negotiating process for misleading the international community.”

“Unfortunately, in our case, failure to honor mutual agreements leads to greater distrust and a deeper gap and requires much greater efforts in the future,” said Sarkisian. He did not go into further details.

Sarkisian and his foreign minister, Eduard Nalbandian, have until now sounded cautiously optimistic about prospects for the establishment of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkey and the reopening of their border. Both men have effectively downplayed Ankara’s renewed linkage between Turkish-Armenian reconciliation and the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The Armenian president has been under fire from his political opponents over a lack of tangible results in Armenia’s unprecedented rapprochement with Turkey that began shortly after he took office in April 2008. He faced particularly strong criticism at home and in the worldwide Armenian Diaspora in late April after Ankara and Yerevan announced a still unpublicized “roadmap” to normalizing bilateral ties.

The announcement came on the eve of the annual remembrance of more than one million Armenians massacred by the Ottoman Turks during World War One. The timing is believed to have made it easier for U.S. President Barack Obama to backtrack on his pledges to officially recognize the massacres as genocide.

Sarkisian’s harshest critics have accused him of willingly sacrificing U.S. recognition of the Armenian genocide without securing the lifting of the 16-year Turkish blockade of Armenia. They have also condemned his apparent acceptance of a Turkish proposal to form a commission of historians that would look into the 1915 mass killings and deportations of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

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Armenia remains hopeful that it will normalize relations with Turkey soon despite renewed preconditions set by Turkish leaders, Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian said on Sunday.

He also pointedly declined to deny that the Armenian government has accepted a Turkish proposal to set up a joint commission of historians that will look into the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. When asked by journalists to comment on statements to that effect made by U.S. and Turkish officials, Nalbandian said, “In order to develop [Turkish-Armenian] relations we intend to create a intergovernmental commission that will deal with numerous issues of interest to the two sides.”

Testifying before a U.S. congressional subcommittee last week, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon said that the formation of a historical commission is part of a Turkish-Armenian “roadmap” agreement announced in late April.

Turkish leaders have said in the past that the joint Turkish-Armenian study should specifically determine whether the Armenian massacres constituted a genocide. Former President Robert Kocharian dismissed the idea as a Turkish ploy designed to keep more countries from recognizing the genocide.

But Kocharian’s successor, Serzh Sarkisian, indicated shortly after taking office last year that he does not object to the Turkish proposal in principle. In an April interview with “The Wall Street Journal,” Sarkisian effectively acknowledged that Yerevan agreed to the establishment of a “historical sub-commission” during its fence-mending negotiations with Ankara.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other Turkish leaders have since made clear that this is not enough for completing the normalization process. They have said that Turkey will not establish diplomatic relations and reopen its border with Armenia before a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict acceptable to Azerbaijan.

Like some U.S. officials, Nalbandian seemed to suggest that the Turkish statements do not preclude the implementation of the “roadmap” deal. “If there is a desire to solve issues by diplomatic means, then that can be done through negotiations, agreements reached as a result of those negotiations and the implementation of those agreements,” he told a joint news conference with Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the visiting foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates.

“I think that we do have such an opportunity with regard to the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations,” added Nalbandian. “And Armenia will continue its efforts in that direction.”

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