Kosovo "will boost Karabakh recognition drive"

By Margarita Antidze and Hasmik Mkrtchyan

YEREVAN (Reuters) - Kosovo's independence will strengthen a bid by the Armenian-backed breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh to be recognized as a state, Armenia's prime minister Serzh Sarksyan told Reuters in an interview.

Sarksyan drew a link between the Serbian province which will declare independence on Sunday and Nagorno-Karabakh, where ethnic Armenian separatists broke away from Azerbaijan in a war in the 1990s but have failed to win international recognition.

"We are getting a rather favorable position," said Sarksyan, front-runner in the February 19 Armenian presidential election. "Recognition of Kosovo's independence can be welcomed by us.

"If countries recognize the independence of Kosovo and then don't recognize the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh, we'll think of double standards," he said late on Saturday.

But Sarksyan, a native of Nagorno-Karabakh, said international recognition for Kosovo "does not mean ... Armenia will immediately recognize the independence of Karabakh."

Armenia is the breakaway region's closest ally.

Armenia and neighbor Azerbaijan are still technically at war over Nagorno-Karabakh, a source of instability close to the route of a pipeline that pumps Caspian Sea oil to world markets.

Armenia's relations with its other neighbor Turkey are fraught, in part because Ankara refuses to recognize as genocide the killings of ethnic Armenians by Ottoman Turkey.