ERDOĞAN CRITICIZES MINSK MEDIATORS OVER KARABAKH
Ankara, 2 February (AZERTAC). Efforts by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe`s (OSCE) Minsk Group, which has striven to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict for more than 17 years, have not been productive, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Sunday, according to Turkey`s English-language newspaper Today`s Zaman.
Speaking in an interview broadcast live on state-owned television station TRT, Erdoğan said Ankara, which last year agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations with Yerevan and reopen their mutual border, insists on seeing progress on the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, in parallel with its own efforts to normalize relations with Yerevan.
“I told it the US President Obama and Russian leader Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin during my last visits to Washington and Moscow.”
“There has been serious neglect by the Minsk trio,” Erdoğan added, referring to the three co-chairs of the Minsk Group - France, Russia and the United States. “They couldn`t bring this issue to a certain point in 20 years. If Russia, the US and France had worked hard within the past 20 years, none of these problems would have emerged; neither the trouble between us and Armenia nor a trouble between Armenia and Azerbaijan would remain,” Erdoğan said, suggesting that Armenia would have stepped back its occupation of the Azerbaijani territory if the co-chairs had put significant pressure on it. “The performance of Russia, the United States and France was below expectations,” he said.
Erdoğan reiterated Ankara`s uneasiness over the grounds for an Armenian Constitutional Court decision on January 12 that found protocols signed with Turkey in Zurich on October 10 of last year in conformance with the Armenian Constitution, as the decision included preconditions and restrictive conditions.
Other news in this section
