Turkey will intensify contacts with Armenia and Azerbaijan, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said yesterday, announcing that his Armenian counterpart, Eduard Nalbandian, will soon visit Turkey.

Babacan, speaking at a news conference after talks with visiting Algerian Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci, also said he would visit Azerbaijan, which has been locked in a dispute with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, under Armenian occupation since the early 1990s. The dates for the visits will be announced later, said Babacan, adding that there will be intense diplomacy among the three countries until end of the year.

Babacan had three-way talks with Nalbandian and Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov in New York on the sidelines of UN General Assembly in September, where they discussed the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.

The row has poisoned not only Armenia-Azerbaijan ties but also relations between Turkey and Armenia. Turkey severed its ties with Armenia and closed its border with the landlocked country in 1993 in show of solidarity with Azerbaijan. There have been no formal ties between the two countries since then, and Ankara says the normalization of relations depends on Armenian withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh and an end to Yerevan's support for the Armenian diaspora's efforts to win international recognition for claims that Armenians were subjected to genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire.

President Abdullah Gül broke the ice when he paid a visit to Yerevan to watch a soccer match between the two countries' national teams in early September. Gül invited Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan to Turkey for the next game between the two countries' teams next year. But Babacan suggested the next meeting would be earlier than that.

Asked when the two presidents would meet again, Babacan said it was not necessary to wait for another soccer game for the next top-level meeting between Turkey and Armenia. "My expectation is that such a meeting could take place in months," he said. "What is important here is the Caucasus platform for lasting peace and stability."

Turkey has proposed a Caucasus Cooperation and Stability Platform to improve dialogue for conflict resolution among regional countries following a brief war between Georgia and Russia over the breakaway region of South Ossetia. The proposed platform is planned to include Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hosted a summit with Sarksyan and Azerbaijani President İlham Aliyev early this month to discuss Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Babacan reiterated that Turkey supported the Russian initiative and said Russia's role was crucial in efforts to normalize relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

A new three-way meeting of the foreign ministers of Turkey, Azerbaijan and Armenia is also planned, but the agenda should be set carefully before deciding on a date, Babacan said. The foreign minister also said his Georgian counterpart told him in a recent visit to İstanbul that Georgia would be part of the proposed Caucasus platform, despite earlier Georgian statements that the country would not sit at the same table with Russia unless it fully withdraws its troops from Georgia.

Gül will visit Azerbaijan today to attend an energy summit in the capital city of Baku at the invitation of his Azerbaijani counterpart, President Aliyev.

Todays Zaman