Putin: Karabakh settlement and Armenian-Turkish reconciliation should not be "tied in one package"

PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkey should not link the normalization of its relations with Armenia to further progress in international efforts to resolve the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday, RFE/RL reported.



Putin also reaffirmed Moscow's support for Turkey's dramatic rapprochement with Armenia, his country's main regional ally, after talks with his visiting Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.



"We receive with great optimism Turkish proposals on the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations," he told a joint news conference. "We very much hope all elements of shortest approaches [to the normalization] will be used in the negotiating process and Armenia's leadership is also on this positive path."



Putin made clear that Moscow believes the two issues should not be "tied in one package." "It is difficult to solve each of these problems separately, and if one tackles them in a single package, then prospects for their settlement will automatically become very remote," he said. "Packaging these problems is not quite right from the practical and strategic standpoints."



Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was among foreign dignitaries that attended the signing in Zurich last October of two protocols envisaging the establishment of diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkey and the opening of their border. 



The Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR) is a de facto independent republic located in the South Caucasus, bordering by Azerbaijan to the north and east, Iran to the south, and Armenia to the west.



After the Soviet Union established control over the area, in 1923 it formed the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) within the Azerbaijan SSR. In the final years of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan launched an ethnic cleansing which resulted in the Karabakh War that was fought from 1991 to 1994.



Since the ceasefire in 1994, most of Nagorno Karabakh and several regions of Azerbaijan around it (the security zone) remain under the control of Nagorno Karabakh defense army.



Armenia and Azerbaijan have since been holding peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group.