MFA. Yerevan not holding talks with Ankara

The Armenian Foreign Ministry denied any negotiations with Turkey, Armenian Report said today.

"Armenia is not conducting negotiations with Turkey in any format," spokesman for the Armenian Foreign Ministry Tigran Balayan said.

He was commenting on the information in the Turkish Hurriyet Daily News after the Armenian News correspondent's request.
According to the information, Ankara made an offer to Yerevan to take part in a regional project in the case of progress in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, as well as voiced this proposal at the OSCE Minsk Group.

While referring to diplomatic sources, the newspaper reported that Ankara is trying to attract the OSCE Minsk Group.

"We presented a comprehensive project of establishing corridors to the OSCE Minsk Group in November 2012," Hurriyet Daily News reported earlier. "This project must be implemented in peacetime and in particular, after Armenia makes a move to liberate the seven occupied regions bordering with Nagorno-Karabakh. We then propose to fully normalise relations between Turkey and Armenia and Armenia and Azerbaijan."

According to the information the proposed project consisted of two phases: the establishment of relations between Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia by restoring unused railways and the building of new ones.

'The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project must be completed by the end of this year and the Turkey-Armenia railway can then be re-opened after some restoration work', the information said.

The second phase of the project envisages the establishment of relations between the regional countries with Europe and Asia, the edition reported. A transportation line between London and Beijing will soon be possible after Marmaray and the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway projects are completed. However the normalisation of the political situation in the region will allow Armenia to join this growing strategic situation, sources close to the project said, the edition reported.

According to the Turkish edition's sources, Turkey informed Baku about the content of the proposed project. 'We made it clear that the project can be implemented only after Armenia advances towards a peace settlement', Azerbaijani sources said, the newspaper reported.