“We are confident that the upcoming meeting of the presidents of Armenia and the United States will give new impetus, a new quality to our bilateral relations,” he told journalists.
Sarkisian is among foreign leaders that will participate in a summit on nuclear security in Washington scheduled for April 12-13. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton invited him to the summit in a phone call last month.
With Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also due in Washington next week, observers believe the U.S. administration will use the forum for a last-ditch attempt to salvage the normalization Turkish-Armenian normalization agreements signed last October.
Asked about the possibility of a meeting between Sarkisian and Erdogan in the U.S. capital, Nalbandian said “no such agreement has been reached as yet.” But he noted that a senior Turkish diplomat, Feridun Sinirlioglu, is in currently Yerevan holding talks with Armenian leaders.
Nalbandian denied opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrosian’s claims that Armenia’s leadership is under growing international pressure to ensure the liberation of at least five of the seven Azerbaijani districts around Nagorno-Karabakh. He said that can not happen before an agreement on Karabakh’s future status.
“Not only Armenia but the three co-chairs [of the OSCE Minsk Group] understand that the main issue in the conflict is Karabakh’s status, the recognition and realization of the Karabakh people’s right to self-determination,” he said. “Without solving this issue it will hardly be possible to find solutions to other issues.”