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.

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 -- 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 -- 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.”

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.

RFE/RL -- President Serzh Sarkisian made late on Thursday his most explicit threat yet to annul Armenia’s normalization agreements with Turkey in what appeared to be a tense conversation with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu reported the next day.

The two men spoke in Kiev on the sidelines of the swearing-in of Ukraine’s newly elected president, Viktor Yanukovich. Davutoglu told Turkish journalists there that the “meeting” centered on Turkish-Armenian relations and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

“We reviewed the Turkish -Armenian normalization relationship in its entirety with open hearts today, including our anxieties and the obstacles we face,” Davutoglu said, according to “Hurriyet Daily News.” “We spoke about Armenian- Azerbaijan relations and the activities of the Minsk Group as related to the Karabakh issue.”

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RFE/RL -- A top U.S. diplomat was reported to praise Armenia’s position in the stalled normalization process with Turkey at a meeting with President Serzh Sarkisian on Thursday.

Sarkisian and Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon met in the Ukrainian capital Kiev after attending the inauguration of Ukraine’s newly elected president, Viktor Yanukovich.

A statement by Sarkisian’s office said the talks focused on the U.S.-backed efforts to normalize relations between Armenia and Turkey.

RFE/RL -- The National Assembly began debating on Tuesday a government bill that would make it easier for Armenia to annul its normalization agreements with Turkey if Ankara continues to delay their ratification.

The proposed amendments to an Armenian law on international treaties envisage the suspension or termination of agreements signed by Yerevan before their entry into force.

President Serzh Sarkisian announced his intention to enact such amendments in December in response to Turkish leaders’ continuing statements making the ratification of the Turkish-Armenian “protocols” conditional on the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh. He made clear that Yerevan will walk away from the deal if Ankara fails to implement it within a “reasonable” time frame.

RFE/RL -- They are a thorn in the side of Armenia’s government and the favorite target of Turkish politicians furious with Armenian genocide bills put before foreign parliaments. Hidden away from the public eye, the thousands of Armenian nationals believed to be illegally working in Turkey form the most low-key and obscure Armenian migrant community abroad.

Successive Turkish governments have for years tolerated their existence to embarrass Yerevan in the international arena and showcase Ankara’s declared good will towards Armenians. Turkish leaders have at various times spoken of between 30,000 and 100,000 citizens of Armenia allegedly residing in their country.

The findings of a newly publicized study conducted by an Istanbul-born Armenian researcher, Alin Ozinian, and commissioned by the Yerevan-based Eurasia Partnership Foundation are a further indication that these figures are wide of the mark. They also give valuable insights into the plight of the mainly female workers scraping a living with housekeeping and other menial jobs.

WHEN the Turkish government signed a deal with Armenia last October, it looked like a clear achievement for its policy of “zero problems” with its neighbours. The old foes agreed to establish relations and open their common border, which had been sealed by the Turks in 1993 in solidarity with Azerbaijan, during its nasty war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly Armenian enclave. The deal offered the hope of burying the ghosts of the past by setting up a joint committee of historians to investigate the mass slaughter of Ottoman Armenians in 1915.

But ancient enmities are not so easily cast off. Just a day after the deal was signed, Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that it could not be implemented until Armenia withdrew from Nagorno-Karabakh, which it has occupied since the war. No matter that the agreement made no mention of the conflict.