New documents on Karabakh, Armenian-Turkish relations

A new WikiLeaks leaked document published by the British newspaper the Guardian, reveals a conversation between French President Nicolas Sarkozy's foreign advisor Jean-David Levitte and US Undersecretary Philip Gordon on the Karabakh conflict and Armenian-Turkish relations. The cable is dated 8 June, 2009.

Gordon says that Levitte said he saw a historic opportunity to make progress on Nagorno-Karabakh and - although the two are not formally linked - relations between Turkey and Armenia. Gordon agreed that progress between the latter two was unlikely without movement on Nagorno-Karabakh, a reality the Armenians understood but had difficulty accepting. Levitte suggested that the U.S. and France remain in contact on this issue, with an eye toward a possible meeting on the margins of the informal ministerial at Corfu. On the question of Turkey's admission to the EU, Levitte said that the Turks themselves had signaled that the important thing was for the process to continue. Levitte said the French fully agreed, since the EU membership criteria served as an engine for modernizing Turkey.