Armenian border may be condition for Turkish entry

"Personally, I do not like that the Armenian-Turkish border gate is closed," Armenia’s Medimax news agency quoted EU Commission President Romano Prodi as saying.

Turkey closed its gate with Armenia and severed its diplomatic ties a decade ago, in protest of Armenia’s occupation of the Azeri territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. EU officials have called on Turkey to revise its decision but has never officially linked the issue to Ankara’s bid to join the EU.

"I do not exclude [the possibility] that the issue of closed borders could be one of the preconditions for Turkey’s membership," he told a joint press conference in Armenia’s capital of Yerevan with Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian.

The foreign ministers of Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan held a trilateral meeting earlier this year discussing a "phased approach" under which Armenia would gradually withdraw from the occupied Azeri territories and Ankara would normalize its ties with Yerevan in return. But no concrete progress has yet been achieved.

Prodi said the EU Commission was set to release its report assessing Turkey’s membership efforts on Oct. 6 but added that the report did not mean "we say ‘yes’ to Turkey," according to Medimax. He said a decision whether accession talks with Turkey should start will be made at a leaders’ summit in December.

Prodi met with Armenian President Robert Kocharian over the weekend during his visit to Yerevan. The meeting reportedly took up the issues of solution efforts in Nagorno-Karabakh and Turkish-Armenian relations.