Armenia — President Sarkissian holds a meeting of National Security Council, 21Apr2010
President Serzh Sarkisian will address the nation on Thursday to announce a promised crucial decision on the future of Armenia’s frozen normalization agreements with Turkey, his office said on Wednesday.
“Members of the Security Council discussed the latest developments in the process of normalizing relations between Armenia and Turkey,” said the statement. “President Sarkisian said that he has held a series of consultations on this issue with the leaders of the parties making up the [governing] political coalition.”
“The president of the republic will address the people on the results of the decision made as a result of the discussions,” it added without elaboration.
Sarkisian has repeatedly threatened to scrap the Turkish-Armenian protocols if Turkey fails to ratify them “within a reasonable time frame.” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated after his Washington talks with Sarkisian that the Turkish parliament will not validate the deal before a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Erdogan’s statements were a clear indication that the two sides failed to agree on how to kick-start their historic rapprochement.
Sarkisian said before flying to the U.S. capital that he has all but decided what to do next in the U.S.-backed process. His foreign minister, Edward Nalbandian, told journalists after the ensuing U.S.-Turkish-Armenian negotiations that Yerevan is now even more confident about the wisdom of that move.