**Armenia’s ruling coalition has said it is halting the ratification in parliament of landmark accords on normalising relations with Turkey.**They said it was because of Turkey’s refusal to “ratify the protocols without preconditions and in a reasonable timeframe”.
The countries signed a historic deal in 2009 to re-establish diplomatic ties.
But ratification has stalled in both countries over the issue of the World War I mass killings of Armenians.
“Considering the Turkish side’s refusal to fulfil the requirement to ratify the accord without preconditions in a reasonable time, making the continuation of the ratification process in the national parliament pointless, we consider it necessary to suspend this process,” the statement said.
Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in 1915, when they were deported en masse from eastern Anatolia by the Ottoman Empire. They were killed by troops or died from starvation and disease.
Armenia says up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed, but Turkey says the figure is no more than one-third of that and that many Turks died as well.
Turkey accepts that atrocities were committed but argues they were part of the war and that there was no systematic attempt to destroy the Christian Armenian people.
Armenia wants Turkey to recognise the killings as an act of genocide, but successive Turkish governments have refused to do so.
Armenians have campaigned for the killings to be recognised internationally as genocide - and more than 20 countries have done so.This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
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