The United States is committed to ensuring a quick resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs said on Tuesday.

Only days after the EU foreign ministers’ warning over Ankara’s ‘failure’ to open its ports to shipping from Greek Cyprus, Greece’s Deputy Foreign Minister Dimitris Droutsas says although Turkey has a place in the bloc, it is not the Turkey of today.

Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Representative Linda Sanchez (D-CA) became, this week, the most recent additions to the growing bipartisan group of legislators supporting the Armenian Genocide Resolution (S.Res.316 and H.Res.252), reported the Armenian National Committee of America.

The event’s keynote speaker, Armenian National Committee of America Chairman Ken Hachikian,outlined the threats facing the Armenian nation as a result of the Armenia-Turkey protocols and the imperative for Armenian unity in opposition of these dangerous documents.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telephoned President Serzh Sarkisian late Thursday just hours after he threatened to annul Armenia’s fence-mending agreements with Turkey if Ankara fails to unconditionally implement them, it emerged on Friday.

International mediators visited Baku on Friday to start preparations for more talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents which they hope will lead to a framework peace accord on Nagorno-Karabakh next year.

Armenia on Thursday explicitly threatened to walk away from its landmark agreements with Turkey if Ankara continues to make their implementation conditional on the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Within days of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan clearly linking the normalization of relations between Ankara and Yerevan to a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, a senior US State Department official urged Turkey to make progress on normalization efforts without setting preconditions.

Armen Rustamian, a leading member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation’s Supreme Council in Armenia is touring East Coast Armenian-American communities visiting with congressional and other U.S. government representatives, announced the ARF Eastern US Central Committee. Rustamyan is also a member of Armenia’s National Assembly, serving as chairman of its Standing Committee on Foreign Relations. During his visit, he will discuss a wide range of issues tied to Armenia’s foreign policy and will reiterate the ARF’s continued opposition to the Armenia-Turkey protocols.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Wednesday for talks that focused on economic relations and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Anatolian News Agency reported.

Armenia and Azerbaijan are close to a deal to end the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrey Nesterenko told a briefing in Moscow on Thursday.

The tacit rebuke by foreign minister Eduard Nalbandian of the forceful comments made by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during his visit to Washington signals official Yerevan’s ambivalence to the political goings on around it and further reinforces the need for a new approach to diplomacy by Armenia.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared on the Charlie Rose show on Tuesday evening to discuss his meeting with President Obama in Washington DC earlier this week. Speaking on Prime-Time television, he directly linked the normalization of his country’s relations with Armenia to a pro-Azerbaijani settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was “a main issue” in Monday’s talks between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and US President Barack Obama, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was quoted by the Azeri Today.az news portal as saying in an interview on Tuesday.