Top EU envoy urges speedy deal for Turkey-Armenia border conflict

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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Peter Semneby, the European Union's top envoy to the South Caucasus region, said reopening the Turkey-Armenia border could lead to reconciliation between the neighbors and strengthen stability in the region.  

Semneby was quoted by AP as telling a group of journalists that any effort to resolve the situation would benefit the 27-member bloc, which encourages EU-candidate Turkey and Armenia to address the issue "speedily." 

Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic relations and their border has been closed since 1993 over Armenia's invasion of 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory – a frozen conflict legacy of the Soviet Union known as Nagorno-Karabakh.

Ankara and Yerevan, however, launched talks last year on establishing diplomatic ties, including the reopening of the border – a rapprochement backed by the European Union and by U.S. President Barack Obama during his visit to Turkey earlier this month. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan said last week he hopes the border will be reopened before Oct. 7, when a return football match between the national teams of the two countries will take place,

Azerbaijan, which has strong cultural and historic ties with Turkey, opposes its ally opening the border saying that such a deal would remove the incentive for Armenia to negotiate over Nagorno-Karabakh.  

In a bid to soothe Azerbaijan’s concerns, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has said the deadlock over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave must be resolved before Turkey and Armenia strike a deal.

Semneby also said normalizing Turkish-Armenian ties would help Turkey's hopes of joining the EU. "It (opening the border) will certainly not hurt Turkey's EU perspectives," Reuters quoted the EU envoy as saying.

He added the EU is not putting pressure on Turkey to recognize the 1915 incidents as "genocide," another disputed issue straining ties between Yerevan and Ankara.

"I can only talk on the behalf of the European Union, and there is absolutely no such pressure, absolutely not. This is not an issue of ours. We are not involved on that issue," he said.