U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s meetings with the Armenian leadership will mostly be aimed at ensuring progress in Armenia’s relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan, Stepan Safaryan, Head of the Heritage parliamentary faction, told NEWS.am.

“The U.S. still believes that progress in one of the fields - either Armenian-Turkish or Armenian-Azerbaijani relations - will bring about progress in the other,” Safaryan said. He pointed out that Hillary Clinton will try to persuade the Armenian and Azerbaijani authorities to reach an agreement in the context of the Obama-Medvedev-Sarkozy statement on the Nagorno-Karabakh problem. “Thus, Clinton hopes to persuade Turkey to ratify the Armenian-Turkish protocols,” Safaryan said.

According to him, in response to Clinton’s proposal to move forward in the context of the Obama-Medvedev-Sarkozy statement, the Armenian side will raise the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh’s status. However, any results of such discussions are difficult to forecast. As to possibility of special discussions of Armenian-Turkish relations, Safaryan expressed the confidence that Armenian committed a diplomatic blunder by stating it accepted the protocols and expected Turkey to ratify them. “There is no need to persuade Armenia of this. The task is to persuade Armenia into making concessions on Nagorno-Karabakh, for obstacles facing Turkey to be removed,” he said.