Armenia-Turkey pact delayed over disagreements

Sat Oct 10, 2009 1:50pm EDT
By Zerin Elci and Katie Reid
ZURICH (Reuters) - A planned peace agreement between Turkey and Armenia to end a century of enmity hit a last minute snag on Saturday over disagreements with statements to be read at the historic ceremony.
U.S. officials sought to help smooth over issues with Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian over the statements, while Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu waited at the venue along with international dignitaries.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton headed back to the Zurich venue where the historic signing of a deal to end a century of hostility was due to take place.
Clinton had returned to her hotel to help smooth over disagreements with Nalbandian over statements to be read at the ceremony which had been due to take place at 5 p.m. (11:00 a.m. EDT).
She had a long telephone call with Davutoglu before meeting Nalbandian.
"We're helping facilitate the two sides come to agreement on statements that are going to come out," U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters. "There's not a breakdown."
A U.S. official said a new version of the Turkish statement had been brought to the hotel.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner were also waiting at the University of Zurich where the ceremony was to be signed.
The deal to normalize ties and reopen the border has faced fierce opposition from nationalists on both sides and a Armenian diaspora which insists Turkey acknowledge the killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces in World War One as genocide.
A decades-old dispute between Turkey's ally Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh had hung over the deal after talks between Azeri and Armenian leaders over the region ended without result on Friday.
An accord would boost U.S. ally Turkey's diplomatic clout in the volatile South Caucasus, a transit corridor for oil and gas to the West.
But disagreements over the Ottoman killings -- which Yerevan calls genocide, a term Ankara rejects -- and a decades-old dispute between Turkey's ally Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh hang over the settlement.
Under U.S. and EU pressure, officials from European Union candidate Turkey and former Soviet republic Armenia said they would sign the Swiss-mediated accord, which sets a timetable for restoring diplomatic ties and opening their border.
It must then be approved by their parliaments in the face of nationalist opposition and the powerful Armenian diaspora.
(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Zurich, Hasmik Mkrtchyan in Yerevan and Margarita Antidze in Tbilisi; Writing by Ibon Villelabeitia; editing by Richard Williams)