UPDATE 2-Baku says Turkey-Armenia thaw may raise tensions

* Azerbaijan says Turkey-Armenia deal threatens "tensions"

* Wants deal first on breakaway, Armenian-backed enclave

* West and Russia courting Azerbaijan for gas

By Afet Mehtiyeva

BAKU, April 23 (Reuters) - Azerbaijan said Turkey and Armenia risked raising tensions in the region if they went ahead with plans to normalise their relations before a dispute over an Armenian-backed enclave inside Azerbaijan was solved.

"The opening of the Armenian-Turkish border cannot take place without a process to resolve the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh," Azeri Foreign Ministry spokesman Elkhan Polukhov said.

"Opening the border could lead to tensions in the region and would be contradictory to the interests of Azerbaijan."

Polukhov said it was "too early" to discuss what steps Azerbaijan might take in retaliation.

Turkey shut its frontier with Armenia in 1993, in solidarity with fellow Muslim Azerbaijan after ethnic Armenian separatist forces took control of the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in a war that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Turkey and Armenia announced late on Wednesday they had agreed a framework for normalising their relations.

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

Azerbaijan is Europe's key hope for supplying gas for the proposed Nabucco pipeline that would run through Turkey and reduce Europe's energy dependence on Russia.

Diplomats fear Baku could reject European overtures and instead sell the gas from phase two of its Shah Deniz field -- due to come online by 2014 -- to Russia for re-export.

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