Chirac calls on Armenian president to improve ties with Turkey

Agence France Presse — English
April 22, 2005 Friday 6:44 PM GMT

PARIS April 22 — French President Jacques Chirac urged Armenia Friday
to improve its ties with Turkey, the country Yerevan blames for the
genocide of hundred of thousands of its people 90 years ago.

“The president asked President (Robert) Kocharian (of Armenia) about
the development of his dialogue with Turkey” in particular on the
genocide issue, a French presidential spokesman said after a meeting
between the two leaders.

The two men hald talks for an hour before leaving the Elysee Palace
to lay a wreath at a paris monument commemorating the victims of the
massacre, conducted under the Ottoman empire.

Chirac “hoped that Armenia would develop this dialogue with Turkey with
a view to improving relations” with Ankara, the spokesman said, and
encouraged Kocharian “to look for elements of improvement with Turkey.”

He pointed out that French support for Turkish membership of the
European Union was conditional on Ankara’s sharing the values of
the EU, and membership “naturally required a duty of remembrance”
on the genocide issue, the spokesman said.

The talks also touched on the disputed Caucasus enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh, where long-simmering tensions have flared recently,
sparking fears that the escalation of hostilities along a ceasefire
line between Armenian and Azeri forces could lead to a new war.

Armenia has controlled Karabakh and seven surrounding regions which
make up 14 percent of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory
since the two former Soviet republics ended large-scale hostilities
with a ceasefire in 1994.

Chirac said that “France was very attached to a lasting solution of
the problem and supports the principles of settlement that have been
worked out,” the spokesman said.

The two presidents discussed the idea of staging an ” Armenian cultural
year in France” in 2007.

Armenia will this weekend mark the 90th anniversary of what it calls
the genocide perpetrated between 1915 and 1917.

Some 1.5 million people may have died in the massacres, though Ankara
puts the figure at between 250,000 and half a million.

The French parliament adopted a controversial law in 2001 which states
that “France publicly recognises the Armenian genocide.”

France has a large community of Armenians, estimated at around 400,000.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress