Armenia asks EU to up pressure on Turkey

Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan will call next week on his EU partners to step up pressure on Turkey to open the border between the two countries.

"Turkey is not respecting its trade commitments with the EU," Sargsyan said in a written interview with European Voice ahead of his trip to Brussels on 11 December, "which includes trade with Armenia".

Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge that the Ottoman empire committed genocide against its Armenian citizens during the first world war has prevented normalisation of relations between Turkey and Armenia, and their border remains closed.

Armenia’s relations with neighbouring Azerbaijan are tense over the "frozen conflict" in Nagorny Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azeri territory held by Armenian forces since a war in the early 1990s. Both countries participate in the European Neighbourhood Policy. In a recent briefing, the International Crisis Group warned that Azerbaijan was using revenue from its burgeoning oil industry to re-equip its military and that the war over Nagorno-Karabakh could reignite. "I’m certain that there is still a good chance for us to settle the Nagorny-Karabakh issue diplomatically," Sargsyan said. "We are and always will be neighbours. We cannot remain enemies forever."

Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan will call next week on his EU partners to step up pressure on Turkey to open the border between the two countries.