Today, European Friends of Armenia held a lunchtime briefing at its Brussels office with H.E. Karine Ghazinyan, Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia. The focus of H.E. Ms Ghazinyan's speech and the subsequent discussion was on current key issues of EU-Armenia Cooperation and the role of the EU in Armenia-Turkey relations.

"The normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey will be a truly historic development, as it will signify the first resolution of a dispute in the South Caucasus by purely diplomatic means. The Union should apply "conditioned anchoring" to both parties. By this we mean the process in which the Union grants financial, economic and political incentives to the parties involved, conditioned to further progress in the implementation of the protocols," EuFoA says in a release.

The Union should, among other initiatives, implement Confidence Building Measures in Armenia and Turkey, promote cross-border projects and strengthen P2P contacts. The whole process is not only intergovernmental, civil societies on both sides have to be actively involved, as they are the primary stakeholders of the process, EuFoA reports.