The leaders of Armenia and Turkey have pledged during a phone call to build on a recently established process aimed at normalizing travel, trade, and diplomatic relations between their two countries.
The two sides issued a joint statement after the call on July 11 saying Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan "stressed the importance of the bilateral process of normalizing relations between the countries."
Erdogan and Pashinian expect a quick implementation of agreements to open the Turkish-Armenian border to citizens of third countries and to allow mutual cargo shipments by air, the statement said.
Special envoys of the two neighboring states reached the agreements during a fourth round of normalization talks held in Vienna on July 1.
"The leaders expressed hope that the agreements reached on July 1 will be implemented in the nearest future," the statement said.
Pashinian last week instructed Armenian government agencies to closely cooperate with their Turkish counterparts to implement the agreements "as soon as possible."
The two countries have never established formal diplomatic relations and their shared border has been closed since the 1990s. The call on July 11 was Pashinian's first direct contact with Erdogan.
SEE ALSO: Excitement, Unease As Armenians Await Turkish Border 'Reopening'Ankara has long made the opening of the border and establishment of diplomatic relations with Yerevan conditional on a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that is acceptable to Azerbaijan.
Their relationship is strained by World War I-era mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, which Yerevan insists amount to a genocide.
The two countries appointed the special envoys in December, one year after a short war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over control of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Azerbaijan employed Turkish combat drones to help it recapture most of the contested territory that had been under ethnic Armenian control since the 1990s.
In a previous sign of warming relations, Turkey and Armenia in February resumed their first commercial flights in two years.