ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTER CONSIDERS SPEAKING OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS BETWEEN YEREVAN AND ANKARA PREMATURE

The establishment of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkey will be the final goal of our negotiations, however we have much to do to that end, Armenian foreign minister Vardan Oskanian told radio “Liberty,” when commenting on the outcomes of his meeting with Turkish foreign ministry head Abdullah Gul in New York. “I do not have grounds to state that serious progress will be made in this respect in the near future yet,” he said. At that V. Oskanian on the whole positively evaluated his meeting with the Turkish colleague, specifying that he means the process itself. “I suppose that finally we are on a right way – from the point of view of the progress already made in our bilateral relations,” the Armenian minister said. In V. Oskanian’s words, in the course of the New York meeting with Abdullah Gul bilateral relations and the Karabakh settlement specifically within the context of the coming presidential election in Azerbaijan, were discussed. A range of regional issues, in particular, the situation in Iraq and Turkey’s possible participation in peacekeeping operations in that country, as well as Middle East processes and their impact on Turkey and the region on the whole were also considered.