Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian said Monday that his country was ready to launch diplomatic relations and open its border with Turkey without any precondition, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.
Nalbandian made the remarks while holding a press conference in Istanbul, adding that he was hopeful for such normalization process.
"Such developments would be for the benefit of both countries," said Nalbandian, adding that he believed there was no big obstacle regarding the normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia.
"Many neighboring countries had problems with each other in different parts of the world, however they carried on with their diplomatic relations and kept their borders open," he said.
Meanwhile, Nalbandian noted that the recent visit of Turkish President Gul to Armenia in early September constituted a good foundation for the normalization of relations between the two countries.
Nalbandian arrived on Monday in Istanbul where he attended a meeting of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization (BSEC) as Armenia holds the current BSEC rotating presidency.
Turkey severed its ties with Armenia and closed its border with the landlocked country in 1993 as a sign of solidarity with Azerbaijan, a Turkic-speaking ally which was fighting Armenian-backed separatists over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Ankara says the normalization of relations depends on Armenia's withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh and an end to Yerevan's support for the Armenian diaspora's efforts to win international recognition for claims that Armenians were subjected to genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire.
Armenia has claimed that up to 1.5 million Armenians died as a result of "massacres" during the Turkish Ottoman Period between 1915 and 1923, but Turkey categorically rejects the accusation.
Source:Xinhua
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