Washington briefing: Obama, Sargsyan have first phone conversation

by Emil Sanamyan

Published: Friday October 09, 2009

In what was the first reported direct conversation between the two presidents, Barack Obama phoned Serge Sargsyan on October 5, "to commend him for his courageous leadership and to encourage continued progress on normalization of relations with Turkey," the White House reported the next day.

Prior to this week's call, high-level U.S. contacts with Mr. Sargsyan were handled by Vice President Joe Biden earlier this year and more recently by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The call was placed while Mr. Sargsyan was visiting Los Angeles, where he received a chilly reception from the Armenian-American community, with thousands rallying against the Armenia-Turkey agreement due to be signed on October 10.

According to the Armenian president's office, in their conversation Mr. Sargsyan emphasized that "the concerns and fears of the far-flung Armenian Diaspora regarding the process are natural, considering the fact that the Armenian people was subjected to genocide by Ottoman Turkey, about which Obama has repeatedly mentioned in his public speeches," RFE/RL reported.

The Armenian president also praised the United States for its role in the Karabakh peace process and said that a settlement should be based on "the decision by Nagorno-Karabakh's people about their ultimate legal status by the free expression of will, which is the basis of the Madrid principles of settlement presented by the Minsk Group mediators."

Mr. Obama in turn repeated the pledge he made last April to support for "a process that would result in normalization of relations [between Armenia and Turkey] . . . without preconditions and within a reasonable timeframe," according to the White House rendition of the policy language.