Armenia and Turkey pledged to overcome decades of enmity over the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces after Turkish President Abdullah Gul's historic visit to Yerevan for a football match.
Gul, the first Turkish president to visit Armenia, met Saturday with counterpart Serzh Sarkisian after which the two agreed there was the "political will" to improve ties frozen for decades over the 1915-1917 massacres.
The visit was hailed by French and EU President Nicolas Sarkozy as "courageous and historic." "I believe that my visit was fruitful and that it promises hope for the future," Gul said after returning to Ankara, adding that he had a constructive and sincere" meeting with Sarkisian.
He said he had won Yerevan's support for a new regional grouping in the Caucasus following last month's conflict between Georgia and Russia. "I was happy to see that we were unanimous with the Armenian side on the need for mutual dialogue to remove barriers to improving bilateral ties.
"I underlined that there is no problem that dialogue cannot solve ..." But in a sign of the uphill task ahead, Gul's arrival at Yerevan's Hrazdan stadium was greeted by loud boos and hisses by Armenian fans.
Amid tight security, Gul took his seat behind a special bullet-proof area. The far stronger Turkish side ended up winning the match 2-0. Sarkisian declared there was a "political will to decide the questions between our countries, so that these problems are not passed on to the next generation."
He also said he had been asked by Gul to attend a return football fixture in Turkey in October next year but did not say whether or not he had accepted.
The two countries - which have no diplomatic relations - have waged a diplomatic battle over Yerevan's efforts to have the 1915-1917 massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians recognised as genocide. Several hundred angry protestors lined the route of Gul's motorcade, holding aloft the Armenian flag and nationalist emblems.
At the start of the match about 80 young protesters gathered at a monument to victims of the killings in central Yerevan, laying flowers and lighting torches. "We want to draw (Gul's) attention to this monument, so he knows it is not standing empty and that people have gathered here to show that the young generation remembers everything," said organiser Airapet Babaian.
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