BBC News, UK
Feb 7 2005
European press review
[parts omitted]
Little Turkish delight left
With France’s ruling UMP party at odds with its most prominent member
– President Jacques Chirac – on the prospect of Turkey’s full EU
membership, Paris’s Le Monde ponders one of the contentious issues
raised during a visit to Turkey by a delegation led by the president
of the French parliament, Jean-Louis Debre.
The paper quotes Mr Debre as telling Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan that “Turkey’s attitude to the Armenian genocide” of 1915
“poses a real problem for France”.
To which Mr Erdogan replied, it notes, that he was “disappointed”
with Paris’s position” and “did not know that 400,000 (dead)
Armenians could decide the referendum” Paris intends to hold on
Ankara’s membership bid.
“Despite this lively exchange,” the paper adds, “Mr Debre believes he
‘may have done some useful work’ on the Armenian question, since the
Turkish authorities say they are willing to ‘consider’ a proposal to
give access to its archives to an international commission of
historians”.