Turkey and Armenia signed a landmark peace accord to restore ties and open their shared border.
The ceremony was marred by a three-hour delay due to last-minute disagreements on statements, forcing US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to engage in intense discussions to salvage a deal.
Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his Armenian counterpart Edward Nalbandian signed the Swiss-mediated deal in Zurich at a ceremony also attended by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.
The Turkish and Armenian parliaments must now approve the deal in the face of opposition from nationalists on both sides.
Mrs Clinton, who declared herself ‘very pleased’ that the protocols had been signed, said both countries had concerns that had delayed the signing ceremony.
Turkey cut ties and shut its border with Armenia in 1993 in support of Azerbaijan, which was then fighting a losing battle against Armenian separatists in Karabakh.
Ties between Turkey and Armenia are strained by what Armenian and many Western historians say was the mass deportation and deliberate killing of up to 1.5m Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during WWI.
Turkey says Armenians were among many thousands killed in the chaos as the Ottoman Empire fought off Russian, British, French and Greek armies and attempted to put down an Arab revolt before eventually imploding under the strain.
But Turkey denies the killings of Armenians amounted to genocide.
The genocide issue has damaged ties between Ankara and its ally the US, where Armenian-Americans have been pushing for years for a law to name the massacres genocide.
Turkey and Armenia came under US and European Union pressure to agree to sign the peace accord.
Mrs Clinton is scheduled to visit Dublin tomorrow as part of a six-city tour, which also includes Belfast and London.
