A senior United States official has praised what he reportedly called the constructive position of Armenia in settling relations with Turkey “at all stages of the process” and called important an unconditional ratification of the recently signed Armenian-Turkish agreements by the two countries’ parliaments.

Meeting President Serzh Sargsyan on Thursday US Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon reiterated U.S. support for the Armenian-Turkish normalization process, according to the Armenian president’s press office. He reportedly emphasized that parliamentary ratifications of the protocols on establishing diplomatic ties and developing bilateral relations between the two estranged neighbors should proceed without any linkage to other existing issues.

Officials in Ankara have been insisting on Armenian concessions to Turkey’s regional ethnic ally Azerbaijan in the ongoing peace talks over Nagorno-Karabakh as a condition for ratifying the fence-mending protocols with Yerevan, causing the internationally backed process to falter in the recent period. In response, President Sargsyan and his administration have issued repeated warnings to Ankara that Armenia might pull out of the deal unless Turkey ratifies it within a “reasonable timeframe” – an approach by and large supported by the international backers of the process.

To further underpin this position, the Armenian legislature dominated by Sargsyan’s political party and governing coalition partners has passed this week amendments to an existing law on international treaties that would allow the suspension or termination of interstate agreements signed by Armenia before they go into force.

The Armenian leader was in the capital of Ukraine to attend the inauguration of the country’s newly elected President Victor Yanukovych – incidentally an honorary citizen of Armenia’s small town of Spitak awarded the title for his outstanding contribution to the elimination of consequences of the 1988 devastating earthquake in Armenia.