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Admit Genocide Before Joining EU, Chirac Tells Turkey

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  • Admit Genocide Before Joining EU, Chirac Tells Turkey

    ADMIT GENOCIDE BEFORE JOINING EU, CHIRAC TELLS TURKEY

    The News - International, Pakistan
    Sept 30 2006

    YEREVAN: French President Jacques Chirac on Saturday urged Turkey
    to recognise World War I-era massacres of Armenians as genocide if
    it wants to join the European Union, speaking during a visit to the
    Armenian capital.

    In comments that are likely to irritate Ankara and put a further
    strain on its relations with France, Chirac told a news conference
    Turkey needed to face up to its Ottoman past in response to a question
    on the nation's EU ambitions.

    Asked if he thought Turkey should recognise the 1915-1917 massacres
    as genocide before it joins the EU, the French president replied:
    "Honestly, I believe so." "All countries grow up acknowledging
    their dramas and their errors," said Chirac, who is on a two-day
    visit to Armenia, where he has paid homage to Yerevan's "genocide"
    memorial and attended the inauguration of a "France Square" in central
    Yerevan. Until now, France had refused to make a direct link between
    the genocide issue and Turkey's EU membership bid. The bloc has not
    made it a condition of entry.

    But a response to the same question by Chirac's Armenian counterpart
    Robert Kocharian was markedly softer, reflecting Armenia's desire to
    mend ties with its neighbour and improve its struggling economy.

    "We don't see any danger in this process," Kocharian said of Turkey's
    EU aspirations, "but we would like that our interests would be
    discussed in the process too," he added. Kocharian said it would be
    in Armenia's interests to have a neighbour "with a value system that
    allows for free movement and open borders."

    France, which has 400,000 citizens of Armenian descent, officially
    recognized the events as genocide in 2001, putting a strain on its
    relations with fellow Nato member Turkey. A proposal by France's
    socialists to make genocide denial a crime punishable by a year in
    prison and a 45,000-euro fine has elicited further ire in Turkey,
    but Chirac said he did not support the proposal.

    "France has fully recognised the tragedy of the genocide and all
    the rest is more like polemics than legislative reality," he said of
    the proposal.

    Armenia has campaigned for Turkey to recognise the WWI massacres,
    in which it says 1.5 million Armenians died, as genocide. But Turkey
    argues that that 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died
    in an internal conflict sparked by attempts by Armenians to win
    independence in eastern Anatolia. Today's Armenia is in an unenviable
    geopolitical position. Flanked to the south-west by historical
    foe Turkey, its eastern borders press up against Azerbaijan, with
    which Yerevan is still technically at war over the Nagorny Karabakh
    enclave. As a result, its only access to the outside world is through
    Iran and Georgia.

    But as relations between Russia and Georgia sour, exemplified by
    this week's Russian-spy row in Tbilisi, transporting Russian goods
    to Moscow's ally Armenia has become more difficult. "Armenia is very
    interested in the normalization of Georgian-Russian relations because
    it directly effects our economy," Kocharian said.

    Chirac, whose country makes up part of the so-called Minsk Group of
    mediators between Armenia and Azerbaijan, has tried to personally
    intervene in their conflict by meeting both presidents in Paris
    earlier this year.

    A framework agreement on the resolution of the territorial dispute
    was widely hoped for during a Paris meeting between the two Caucasus
    presidents, however no visible progress was made. Chirac defended
    the Minsk Group, which Azerbaijan has criticised, saying its experts
    "have done good work, of course in an infinitely complex situation."
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