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Turkey not to open border with Armenia unless Karabakh issue solved -PM

Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict Materials 11 April 2009 10:38 (UTC +04:00)

The Turkish-Armenian border will not be opened unless the Nagorno-Karabakh problem is resolved, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said, Itar-Tass reported.

"Unless the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is resolved, we will not take any steps towards opening the border with Armenia," the Ihlas news agency quoted Erdogan as saying.

"Turkey will not sign the final agreement with Armenia unless Azerbaijan and Armenia reach consensus on Nagorno-Karabakh," he said.

"We will prepare the infrastructure and do preliminary work, but this [the opening of the border] will depend entirely on the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani problem. It has to be settled first," the prime minister said.

The statement came as a response to local press reports saying that the border with Armenia may be opened before the end of this month.

Some local observers believe that these reports cause tension between Turkey and Azerbaijan, which is one of Ankara's major partners in the region.

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