RFE/RL -- Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in Washington on Monday in an effort to kick-start the stalled process of normalizing relations between their countries.

Reports from the U.S. capital said the meeting, held on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama, lasted for about 80 minutes. Armenia’s and Turkey’s foreign ministers were also in attendance.

Neither Sarkisian, nor Erdogan made any public statements after the talks. The Armenian leader was scheduled to meet Obama later in the day. That meeting was likewise expected to focus on ways of salvaging the U.S.-brokered agreements to establish diplomatic relations between Turkey and Armenia and open their land border.

Both the White House and official Ankara said at the weekend that Obama will hold separate talks with Erdogan on Tuesday. “The priority issue is developments regarding Armenia,” the Turkish premier told journalists, announcing the news.

Erdogan also indicated that his government continues to link the parliamentary ratification of the two Turkish-Armenian “protocols” with a breakthrough in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. “Hurriyet Daily News” quoted him as saying that the U.S., Russian and French mediators co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group should be “much more active” in trying to broker a Karabakh settlement.

Erdogan flew to Washington just days after sending Turkey’s Ambassador Namik Tan back to the United States. Tan was recalled to Ankara last month in protest against a U.S. congressional committee’s approval of a draft resolution recognizing the 1915 massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

Turkish officials say the Obama administration has assured Ankara that it will try to block further progress of the resolution. They also hope that Obama will again refrain from using the word “genocide” in his April 24 statement due on the 95th anniversary of the start of the mass killings and deportations.

“We received some satisfactory messages [from Washington,]” Tan told the Associated Press on Friday. “I hope there will be a new chapter.”