Moscow to Organize Meeting Between Armenian, Turkish Diplomats

Moscow is preparing to arrange a meeting between Armenian and Turkish diplomats in the near future. Citing Turkish diplomatic sources, Regnum news agency reports that the meeting of Turkish and Armenian diplomats is expected to convene in March.

According to the source, the issue of holding this meeting was discussed in Moscow between the deputy foreign ministers of Turkey and Russia, Feridun Sinirlioglu and Grigory Karasin, respectively.

According to the news agency, the Turkish party, as before, is placing the issue of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as a pre-condition to fully normalizing relations with Armenia. For the normalization of relations, it’s enough for Turkey that Armenia “hand over to Azerbaijan some of the territories occupied by Armenia.”

In this regard, Karasin recently travelled to Yerevan and discussed the issue with the Armenian side. US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg will visit Yerevan for the same purpose. On Mar. 5, with the mediation of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a meeting between Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev will take place in Sochi, and a week later, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Moscow.