Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian (left) with his Greek counterpart Nikos Kotzias speaks at a press conference in Athens on Wednesday
ATHENS—Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian on Wednesday reiterated an earlier pledge by President Serzh Sarkisian that Yerevan will officially scrap the dangerous Turkey-Armenia Protocols by next spring.
Speaking the Greek Foreign Ministry, where he held a meeting with his counterpart Nikos Kotzias, Nalbandian said that Turkey has failed to keep its end of the bargain and has not ratified the documents, placing preconditions that are beneficial to Azerbaijan.
After providing historical context for the ill-advised process of seeking normalization of relations with Turkey, Nalbandian reiterated an assertion made by Sarkisian, who in September told the United Nations General Assembly that Armenia will withdraw from the Protocols, signed in Zurich in 2009, before the spring of 2018.
“Up to now, those documents [the Protocols] have not been ratified, since Turkey came up with groundless preconditions that run counter to the letter and spirit of the Protocols. These documents cannot be held hostage forever and that is why the President of Armenia declared in September from the podium of the UN General Assembly that Armenia will declare the Protocols null and void since they continuously lacked any positive progress towards their implementation and we will enter the spring of 2018 without those Protocols,â€
