By Helena Bedwell and Steve Bryant -- Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Armenia said Turkey’s government will be to blame if the Turkish parliament delays a vote on a treaty to re-open their common border, as a dispute over ratification threatens to derail the agreement.

“Armenia will take appropriate measures if Turkey refuses to act on the treaty in time or deliberately delays,” Nairi Petrosyan, a spokesman for Armenia’s National Assembly said in a telephone interview from Yerevan. “This was agreed from the beginning when the sides met in Geneva on signing the accord.”

The two nations agreed Oct. 10 to re-establish ties and open their border within two months of ratification. Armenia expects the step to boost the country’s economy. Relations have been frozen since Turkey closed the border in 1993 to protest Armenia’s occupation of the Nagorno-Karabakh region in Azerbaijan, a key Turkish ally and energy supplier.

Two days ago, Turkey accused the Armenian Constitutional Court, which approved the accord last week, of adding conditions to the treaty that distort the text agreed on last year relating to a commission to investigate the killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in World War I. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the ratification process would stall unless the court revises its ruling.

Armenian opposition politicians are concerned the treaty may lead to compromises with Azerbaijan on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh as well as on Armenia’s demand that Turkey recognize the massacres as genocide.

‘New Ball Game’

Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Burak Ozugergin rejected accusations of delay, while reiterating the Turkish view that the court had changed the text of the treaty.

“Turkey does not accept accusations that it’s delaying,” he said in a telephone interview from Ankara yesterday. Unless Armenia takes action to change the court decision, “it would not be the same text, it would be a whole new ball game.”

In the Oct. 10 agreement, Turkey and Armenia pledged to set up a joint commission of historians to investigate the massacres, recognized by France and other countries as genocide. Armenia says as many as 1.5 million people were systematically killed. Turkey cites a lower figure and says the deaths were the result of civil strife in which many Turks were also killed.

Petrosyan said Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has not forwarded the treaty to the National Assembly for ratification yet. Samvel Farmanyan, a spokesman for Sargsyan, said by phone that “no text has been changed.”

“It’s clear by the rhetoric coming out of Ankara and Yerevan that the agreements are in trouble,” Lawrence Sheets, senior analyst and Caucasus program director with the International Crisis Group, said by e-mail from Tbilisi. “If Turkey and Armenia fail to establish relations, the peace process regarding Nagorno-Karabakh will also be in trouble, with potentially disastrous consequences down the road, given the saber-rattling going on about a new war”.

The government of Armenia, a landlocked country of 3.2 million people, estimates opening the border will increase foreign investment by 50 percent.

Farmanyan said the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan plan to meet in Sochi, Russia, on Jan. 25 to discuss Nagorno- Karabakh.