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French Foreign Ministry Says It Is "Very Attentive" To Turkish Anger

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  • French Foreign Ministry Says It Is "Very Attentive" To Turkish Anger

    FRENCH FOREIGN MINISTRY SAYS IT IS "VERY ATTENTIVE" TO TURKISH ANGER OVER ARMENIAN GENOCIDE BILL

    Pravda, Russia
    May 10 2006

    The comment from France's Foreign Ministry came as Turkish legislators
    lobbied their French counterparts to vote down the Armenian genocide
    bill. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday likened
    the issue to a "virus," hinting of possible repercussions for ties.

    "The relationship between France and Turkey is not an ordinary
    relationship," he said. "The French parliament will not inject a
    virus like the so-called Armenian genocide into such an important
    relationship."

    Earlier Wednesday, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Denis Simonneau
    said: "We are very attentive to the Turkish authorities' reactions
    on this subject."

    He did not comment further, referring reporters to an earlier
    declaration and to lawmakers who drafted the bill.

    The proposed law would make it a crime to deny that the mass killings
    of Armenians by Ottoman Turks at the beginning of the 20th century
    constituted a genocide.

    Turkey says the death toll given by Armenians is inflated and that
    Armenians in Turkey were killed in civil unrest - not genocide -
    as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

    The French bill was proposed by the opposition Socialists. It is
    similar to a law making it a crime in France to deny the Holocaust
    ofWorld War II.

    The visiting Turkish legislators from Erdogan's ruling party and the
    opposition met with senior French legislators from the ruling right
    and opposition left.

    Lawmaker Onur Oymen said they "relayed the Turkish people's strong
    reaction to our French colleagues" and warned that there were calls
    for a boycott of French goods in Turkey and that Turkish-French
    relations would be severely harmed if the bill is passed, Turkey's
    Anatolia news agency reported.

    Bulgarian lawmakers on Wednesday refused to recognize the mass
    killings as a genocide, saying this could endanger relations with
    neighboring Turkey.

    Legislators voted 81-56 with 33 abstentions against a draft resolution
    proposed by the ultranationalist party Ataka, calling for "the
    recognition of the Armenian genocide by the Turks."

    The motion was rejected with the votes of the parties from the
    Socialist-led ruling coalition that also includes a mainly ethnic
    Turkish party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, the AP reports.

    "This is a resolution ... that aims to complicate our relations with
    neighboring Turkey," Socialist lawmaker Mihail Mikov told parliament.

    According to official statistics, Bulgaria - a tiny Balkan country
    of 7.8 million - has an 800,000-strong ethnic Turkish minority.

    About 11,000 ethnic Armenians also live in Bulgaria, and most of
    them are heirs of Armenian refugees who fled Ottoman Turkey during
    the early 20th century massacre.
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