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US ‘Strongly Supports Direct Dialogue’ Between Armenia, Turkey: Philip Gordon

At a news conference on the NATO Ministerial in Berlin, Assistant Secretary at the US State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon spoke of Armenia-Turkey relations including the involvement of the US, among other interests tied to Turkey.

“Turkey-Armenia relations aren’t necessarily a subject for a NATO meeting, but I can say as a general rule that very often when we meet with out Turkish counterparts and the secretary meets with her Turkish counterpart, the question of Turkey-Armenia comes up because it’s very important to us.

“There have been efforts over the past several years to improve that relationship, which we’ve made clear we strongly support. Those efforts have recently stalled, which we’ve made clear we regret, because we believe it’s in the interest of both countries to continue the normalization process, re-establish relations and have friendly relations and open trade from which both countries would benefit.

“So we continue to strongly support direct dialogue between the two countries and normalization of their relationship, and we bring it up very frequently with our counterparts on both sides,” Anadolu Ajansi reports, citing Gordon.