The statement by the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Mevlut Cavusoglu is not true, Armenia’s FM Edward Nalbandian told reporters in Strasbourg on Tuesday.

Cavusoglu stated that there is a verbal agreement between Armenia and Turkey, according to which progress in rapprochement between two state is dependent on the  breakthroughs in Karabakh conflict resolution.

According to Nalbandian, preconditions are out of the question in Armenia-Turkey normalization process. The minister recalled that the representatives of those countries, who attended the signing ceremony of the Protocols in Zurich, also hold this position. He recalled U.S.  State Secretary Hillary Clinton’s statement that “the ball is in Turkey’s court”.

“It is wrong that one party shifts responsibility, making another party amenable for everything,” Nalbandian emphasized, adding if Turkey goes to the language of preconditions, Armenia has stronger reasons for weightier preconditions.

As Armenian News-NEWS.am reported earlier, the Armenian-Turkish border was closed in 1993. Ankara broke off ties with the Armenian side in solidarity with Azerbaijan. In October 10, 2009, in Zurich, Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Armenia and Turkey signed the “Protocol on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations” and “Protocol for the development of bilateral relations”, which needed to be ratified by the parliaments of the two countries. However, this did not happen.

The signing ceremony was attended by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and France Bernard Kouchner, as well as Secretary General of the Council of the European Union Javier Solana. The signing ceremony was at the center of the world’s attention, broadcast on 70 TV channels.

On December 7, 2009, Turkey linked the Armenian-Turkish process to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. During a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Ankara would not ratify the Armenian-Turkish protocols without resolution of the Karabakh conflict. On April 22, 2010, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan signed a decree suspending the ratification process