The Foreign Ministry announced yesterday that Foreign Minister Ali Babacan will travel to Azerbaijan this weekend. Today's Zaman has also learned that Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian, who visited İstanbul this week to attend a ministerial gathering of the Black Sea countries, is planning to invite Babacan to Yerevan for the next meeting of the regional group.

Nalbandian was in İstanbul on Monday for attending a meeting of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC), a regional cooperative organization with Armenia currently holding the rotating presidency. While in İstanbul, Nalbandian met with Babacan.

Nalbandian told Today’s Zaman that he planned to invite Babacan “at the earliest opportunity” to a foreign ministers’ meeting of the BSEC which will be hosted in Yerevan on Apr. 29, 2009.

Turkish diplomatic sources declined to comment on Ankara’s possible response, noting that they haven’t received an official invitation yet. The eventual decision will be made in reference to “the course of affairs” in the ongoing negotiations with Armenia, the same sources told Today’s Zaman.

Ahead of the foreign ministers’ meeting, Yerevan will host working meetings for BSEC energy ministers on March 13, for BSEC transportation ministers on March 27, for BSEC agricultural ministers in first week of April, and for environment ministers on Apr. 10. Stressing the importance attached to the BSEC by Ankara, diplomatic sources haven’t excluded the idea of Turkey’s participation in these meetings.

Turkey severed its diplomatic ties with Armenia and closed its border in 1993 in protest against the Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan. Ankara says the normalization of relations depends on Armenia’s 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. But a visit by President Abdullah Gül in early September to Yerevan to watch a World Cup qualifying match between Turkey and Armenia’s national teams broke the ice between the two countries. Officials have been holding talks on the possible normalization of relations since that historic visit.

In September, on the sidelines of a UN General Assembly meeting in New York, Babacan and Nalbandian had three-way talks with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.

The Foreign Ministry yesterday announced that Babacan will travel to Baku on Sunday for a two-day official visit at the invitation of his Azerbaijani counterpart.

In addition to bilateral and regional affairs, the two ministers will also discuss Ankara’s proposal for a Caucasus Stability and Cooperation Platform to promote dialogue between the countries of that region, the ministry said in a brief statement.

Meanwhile, a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Helsinki in early December is expected to offer an opportunity for a new trilateral meeting between the foreign ministers of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey, although no formal decision on such a meeting has been made yet.

TODAYSZAMAN