Cyprus-Forum.com

[yialousa1971]

Armenia's parliament on Thursday voted to scrap protocols signed with Turkey in a landmark deal to establish diplomatic ties between the countries after almost a century of hostility.

Published: 6:09PM GMT 25 Feb 2010

The amendments, passed by a vote of 70-4, will allow President Serzh Sarkisian to suspend ratification and withdraw from previously signed international agreements.

The move comes amid growing frustration in Armenia over the Turkish parliament's failure to ratify two agreements signed in October to establish diplomatic ties and open the Armenian-Turkish border.

"The need for these amendments obviously stems from the current situation with the process of ratification of the Armenia-Turkey protocols," said Armen Rustamian, the chairman of parliament's foreign affairs committee.

"Existing tools are not sufficient to protect our interests and these changes create such a legal basis.... Armenia is today facing such problems that it may withdraw from the process. We are now developing an exit strategy," he told parliament.

The signing of the deals was hailed internationally as a key step in overcoming decades of enmity.

Turkey rejects Armenian claims that the Ottoman Empire's massacre of up to 1.5 million people in 1915, a defining moment in Armenia's national identity, amounts to genocide.

But ratification by both countries' parliaments has stalled as the two sides have traded accusations of trying to modify the deal.

Turkey has accused Armenia of trying to set new conditions after Armenia's constitutional court said the protocols could not contradict its government's official position that the Armenian mass killings constituted genocide - a label Turkey fiercely rejects.

Armenia, for its part, is furious over Ankara's insistence that normalising Turkish-Armenian ties depends on progress in resolving the conflict between Armenia and Turkish ally Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with Azerbaijan after ethnic Armenian forces wrested Nagorny Karabakh from Baku's control in a war that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives.

The conflict remains unresolved despite years of international mediation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/armenia/7317924/Armenian-MPs-adopt-exit-strategy-on-Turkey-accords.html