Azerbaijan cautions over Turkey-Armenia thaw

BAKU (Reuters) - Azerbaijan warned Turkey and Armenia on Thursday that they should only normalize their relations if Armenian troops are withdrawn at the same time from a disputed enclave inside Azerbaijan.

Turkey and Armenia announced late on Wednesday that they had agreed a framework for normalizing their relations, the first such move since Turkey closed its border to Armenia in 1993.

Turkey shut the frontier in solidarity with fellow Muslim nation Azerbaijan after Armenian-backed forces took control of the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in a bloody war following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Azerbaijan, a supplier of oil and gas to the West, now fears losing leverage over Christian Armenia in the dispute if Turkey reopens the border with Armenia and restores full diplomatic relations.

Since Armenia is landlocked and its border with Azerbaijan is also closed, the Turkish frontier is of key importance for trade routes to the West.

"It is the sovereign right of every country to define its relations with other countries," an Azeri Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoting as saying by Azeri news website Day.az.

"Nevertheless, Azerbaijan considers that the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations must proceed in parallel with the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied lands of Azerbaijan."

(Reporting by Matt Robinson, editing by Michael Stott and Jon Boyle)