ANKARA (AFP) — President Abdullah Gul will on Saturday become the first Turkish head of state to visit Armenia, his office said, fuelling hopes of easing almost a century of hostility over massacres by Turkish Ottoman empire forces.

Gul will go to Yerevan to attend a football match between the two countries, which do not have diplomatic relations and have spent decades at loggerheads over Armenia's attempts to get the massacres classified as "genocide."

Armenia's President Serge Sarkisian invited Gul last month to attend the qualifying match for the 2010 World Cup finals. Turkish diplomats and security officials have been in Yerevan this week making final preparations.

"A visit around this match can create a new climate of friendship in the region," the Turkish presidency said in a statement posted on its website. "It's with this in mind that the president has accepted the invitation.

"This match could lift the obstacles blocking the coming together of two peoples who share a common history and can create a new foundation," it said.

The Turkish presidency said it hoped the visit means "an opportunity for a better mutual understanding."

The trip, which comes amid heightened tensions in the Caucasus region following the conflict last month between Georgia and Russia, will only last a few hours, a Turkish diplomatic source said.

Sarkisian earlier welcomed a Turkish proposal for a new forum in the volatile Caucasus region after meeting a senior Turkish envoy to prepare the visit.

"Armenia has always welcomed and welcomes all efforts directed at the strengthening of confidence, stability and security, and at deepening cooperation in the region," Sarkisian said in a statement after meeting Gul's special envoy Unal Cevikoz.

He added that Cevikoz's visit "raises the possibility of talks to settle mutual relations" between the two countries.

Turkey has refused to establish diplomatic relations with Armenia since it became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991. The key reason is Yerevan's campaign for the deaths of Armenian civilians in 1915-1917 to be classified as genocide.

Armenia says up to 1.5 million people were killed in orchestrated massacres during World War I as the Ottoman Empire fell apart before being dismantled in 1920.

Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that 250,000-500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife as Armenians fought for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with invading Russian troops.

About 20 countries have recognised the events as genocide. The European parliament recognised the "genocide" in 1987 and France in 2001 became the first major European nation to publicly recognise the Armenian genocide but did not explicity blame the Turks.

In 2005, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan took a tentative first step towards resolving the thorny genocide issue by mooting that a joint commission of historians launch an investigation and publish their conclusions.

The proposal was rejected by Yerevan.

A Turkish diplomatic source said Gul's visit would last only a few hours and expectations that he would announce his agreement were not welcomed by opposition deputies and nationalist militants in Turkey.

"I would have preferred to go to Baku for a match and not to Yerevan," said opposition chief Deniz Baykal, referring to Turkey's traditionally warm ties with Azerbaijan.

In 1993, Ankara closed its border with Armenia over Nagorny Karabakh, an Armenian-majority region in Azerbaijan which proclaimed independence.

Backed by Armenia, ethnic Armenian forces took control of the mountainous territory during a war in the early 1990s that left nearly 30,000 dead and sparked an exodus of around one million.

Source: AFP