While flying over Turkey on his three-day working trip to the United Kingdom, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan sent a message to his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul in which he urged the leadership in Ankara “to manifest determination to make the next major step and leave to the coming generations a stable and secure region.”

Sargsyan’s message to Gul came amid a stalling rapprochement process that the two leaders started about a year and a half ago by attending together a football match in the Armenian capital. That effort resulted in diplomatic protocols signed by the two countries’ foreign ministers in October last year.