RFE/RL -- President Serzh Sarkisian has suggested that Turkey will not unconditionally normalize relations with Armenia anytime soon and again threatened to annul the universally welcomed agreements signed by the two nations last October.

In an interview with the French daily “Le Figaro” published on Thursday, Sarkisian also warned that Ankara’s reluctance to ratify them is swelling the ranks of Armenians opposed to his conciliatory policy on Turkey.

“Our desire to establish normal relations is great,” he said. “However, recent statements from Turkey make me think that they will not ratify the protocols in the foreseeable future.

AP, By DESMOND BUTLER -- A U.S. congressional resolution that would recognize World War I-era killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide could go forward despite opposition from the Obama administration.

Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon told reporters there is no deal with Democratic congressional leaders to block the resolution. That contradicts earlier claims by the State Department.

"Congress is an independent body, and they are going to do what they decide to do," Gordon said ahead of speech at the Brookings Institution.

Turkey strongly opposes the resolution. It withdrew its ambassador to Washington earlier this month after a congressional committee approved the measure.

RFE/RL -- Azerbaijan stepped up its threats to win back Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenian-controlled territories surrounding it by force on Thursday, with Defense Minister Safar Abiyev speaking of a growing likelihood of “a great war” with Armenia.

“For 15 years diplomacy has not achieved any concrete results and Azerbaijan cannot wait another 15 years,” Abiyev said, according to an Azerbaijani Defense Ministry statement reported by local and international media.

“Now it's the military's turn and the threat is growing every day," Abiyev was quoted as telling the French ambassador to Baku, Gabriel Keller. “If Armenia does not end its occupation of Azerbaijan's territory, the beginning of a great war in the South Caucasus is inevitable.”

RFE/RL -- Turkey is extremely unlikely to ratify its fence-mending protocols with Armenia at this juncture, a senior Turkish lawmaker and deputy chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) said on Thursday.

In an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian service in Yerevan, Suat Kiniklioglu made clear that Ankara continues to make the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations conditional on a Karabakh settlement. He said the passage of an Armenian genocide resolution by a U.S. congressional committee has rendered Turkish ratification of the protocols even “more difficult.”

“[Ratification] is very difficult right now,” Kiniklioglu said, speaking on the sidelines of an international seminar organized in the Armenian capital by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. “It’s almost impossible. Especially after [the progress of the House Resolution] 252, it’s almost impossible.”

RFE/RL -- Underscoring its status as Armenia’s leading European donor, Germany has announced its intention to provide up to 100 million euros ($137 million) in fresh loans aimed at fostering the country’s economic development.

The German ambassador in Yerevan, Hans-Jochen Schmidt signed a relevant agreement with Finance Minister Tigran Davtian on Tuesday.

Armenian Finance Ministry said the four loans as well as some 5.5 million euros in separate German grants to Yerevan will be disbursed “in the coming years.” The Armenian and German governments will negotiate separate and more detailed agreements on each item of the funding package, it said.

Iran has its own considerations and views about a peacekeeping force that could be deployed in the Karabakh conflict zone, according to the Islamic Republic’s chief diplomat in Armenia.

Ambassador Seyed Ali Saghaeyan told a press conference in Yerevan on Friday that “Iran shares a common border with Karabakh and therefore we surely have our own considerations and views about the composition of a peacekeeping force that might be deployed in the conflict zone.”

The ambassador did not specify, however, the country whose participation in such a peacekeeping operation would be unacceptable for Iran. Nor did the Iranian ambassador specify what he meant by saying that Iran and Karabakh “share a common border.” Saghaeyan was speaking in Persian through his official interpreter.

RFE/RL -- The opposition Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) blamed on Friday Armenia’s controversial agreements with Turkey for the difficulty with which pro-Armenian lawmakers pushed their latest genocide resolution through a U.S. congressional committee.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved the non-binding measures by 23 votes to 22. The outcome of the vote, which lasted for over 90 minutes, hang in the balance until the last minute. The panel passed similar resolutions, most recently in 2007, by much wider margins in the past.

RFE/RL -- Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian accused Azerbaijan of distorting the existing international plan to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh as he met the American, French and Russian mediators in Paris late on Tuesday.

Nalbandian was expected to clarify Armenia’s position on the recently modified “basic principles” of a Karabakh settlement put forward by the three co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry said the meeting focused on “the latest developments” in the Karabakh negotiating process and the mediators’ plans to pay another visit to the conflict zone this month. It said they briefed Nalbandian on the results of their March 5 talks in the French capital with Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov.

RFE/RL -- A new economic manifesto unveiled by the opposition Armenian National Congress (HAK) has prompted an unexpectedly positive reaction from Armenia’s leadership, with Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian saying that it has many similarities with his government’s reform agenda.

The 15-page program published late last month was developed by a team of economists led by former Prime Minister Hrant Bagratian. It lists 100 policy measures which the HAK believes would end the monopolization of key sectors of the Armenian economy, improve the country’s business environment and ensure a more equitable distribution of wealth among its citizens.

The opposition bloc led by former President Levon Ter-Petrosian specifically wants to shift the main tax burden from small and medium-sized enterprises to a handful of government-linked “oligarchs” whom it accuses of “strangling free enterprise” in the country.

Military authorities in Nagorno-Karabakh have denied violating a ceasefire following a casualties report issued by Azerbaijan on Thursday. A spokesman said Stepanakert remains committed to the agreed regime along the line of contact with Azerbaijani armed forces.

RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service quoted the country’s Defense Ministry as confirming that three Azerbaijani soldiers were killed and another soldier was wounded “after exchanging fire with Armenian armed forces near the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.” The Azerbaijani ministry did not specify where the fighting took place. Its spokesman said the Armenian side also suffered casualties.

Talking to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Friday, a Nagorno-Karabakh military spokesman advised “searching for the causes of the Azerbaijani soldiers’ deaths in the [low] morale of the Azerbaijani armed forces.” He also flatly denied casualties on the Armenian side.

RFE/RL -- Official Yerevan dismissed on Tuesday Turkish warnings that a U.S. congressional resolution describing the 1915 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide would set back the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations.

It also emerged that a group of mostly pro-government Armenian parliamentarians is heading to Washington in an apparent effort to facilitate the passage of the resolution introduced by pro-Armenian U.S. legislators a year ago.

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to discuss and vote on the proposed legislation on Thursday. It urges President Barack Obama to “accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide.”

Civilitas Foundation -- Azerbaijan’s minister of foreign affairs has found generally acceptable the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs’ new version of the principles for the settlement of the Karabakh conflict, proposed last December in Greece. This is the first occasion since 1997 that Baku has found the mediators’ proposal acceptable.

Now, it is Armenia’s turn and it will be difficult for Armenia to say "Yes" to the version that took shape first in Krakow in July 2009, then in Athens at the end of 2009 and then in Sochi on January 25, 2010, because in contrast to the 2007 Madrid proposals, not only is the right of the people of Nagorno Karabakh to self-determination very vague, but in terms of removing the consequences of the conflict, Azerbaijan is at an advantage.

Since 1997, Azerbaijan has either rejected or withheld consent to all settlement proposals; it also rejected the Madrid document presented in 2007. And now, over the course of a mere two years, the mediators have presented proposals which are acceptable to Azerbaijan and unacceptable for Armenia.

RIA Novosti -- The European Union on Tuesday called on Armenia and Turkey to ratify protocols on bilateral relations without preliminary conditions.

Armenia and Turkey signed protocols on establishing diplomatic relations and on developing bilateral relations last October. They are yet to be approved by their parliaments.

"The European Union supports the process started between Armenia and Turkey and calls on the countries to stay true to this process. The EU urges the countries to ratify and implement the protocols without preliminary conditions," Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, whose country now holds the rotating EU presidency, told a press conference in Yerevan.

Reuters -- Turkey's prime minister has warned that he might deport up to 100,000 Armenians living in Turkey without citizenship after resolutions passed by U.S. and Swedish lawmakers defining World War One-era killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide.

Earlier this month, Turkey withdrew its ambassadors to Washington and Stockholm after a U.S. congressional committee and the Swedish parliament passed the non-binding resolutions.

It also warned that the resolutions could affect progress in fragile reconciliation process between Turkey and Armenia.

Asked during an interview with the BBC Turkish service in London on Tuesday what he thought about the resolutions, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said: "There are currently 170,000 Armenians living in our country. Only 70,000 of them are Turkish citizens, but we are tolerating the remaining 100,000."

RFE/RL -- Armenia and Azerbaijan are narrowing their differences over a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict sought by international mediators, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said over the weekend.

“We are trying to help Armenians and Azerbaijanis to reach a common approach,” the DPA news agency quoted him as saying at the Munich Security Conference. “It's obviously a very difficult issue, but things are moving.”

“The understanding is growing and the number of issues that must be tackled by the top leaders is reducing and we are trying to help,” Lavrov said.

Russia, which co-chairs the OSCE Minsk Group with the United States and France, has stepped up its involvement in the Karabakh negotiating process of late, with President Dmitry Medvedev hosting this year’s first meeting of his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts near the Russian city of Sochi late last month.