Swiss FM Calmy-Rey commemorates "victims of Armenian genocide"

According to Swissinfo/Swiss Radio International (SRI), Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey held talks with her Armenian counterpart, Vardan Oskanyan, in the capital Yerevan on Monday. The discussions focused on bilateral relations and the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno Karabakh.

Switzerland has offered to act as a mediator in the long-running conflict in a bid to broker a peace agreement. Earlier this year Calmy-Rey also visited neighbouring Azerbaijan.

However, Calmy-Rey said neither of the two countries in the southern Caucasus region had requested further steps by Switzerland.

Calmy-Rey said she also discussed the killing of up to 1.5 million ethnic Armenians by troops of the former Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1919.

She laid a wreath at the monument for the "victims of massacre".

"I wanted to express my sympathy with the people," she said. She also played down a possible worsening of relations with Turkey over the issue.

The Swiss government does not recognise the killings and deportations as genocide, but one chamber of the Swiss parliament voted in 2003 to follow the United Nations and the European parliament in doing so.

Calmy-Rey also signed an agreement on double taxation in Yerevan in an effort to spur closer economic relations between Switzerland and Armenia. Switzerland has been providing development to Yerevan since a powerful earthquake hit northern Armenia in 1988.

/www.swissinfo.org/