ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
April 24, 2005 Sunday

French Armenians commemorate genocide anniversary

By Nikolai Morozov

PARIS

The French Armenian community, which is the largest in Europe,
commemorated the 90th anniversary of the beginning of Armenian
genocide by the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

There are meetings and marches throughout France. French Armenians
are demanding the Turkish recognition of the large-scale killings.

Churches prayed for the slaughtered Armenians, and a stone was laid
in the foundation of a memorial marking the genocide anniversary in
Marseilles, where about 80,000 French Armenians live.

On Friday French President Jacques Chirac and visiting Armenian
President Robert Kocharyan laid wreaths to the monument to Armenian
genocide victims in Paris.

According to Yerevan, the large-scale killings of Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire in 1915-1917 claimed 1.5 million lives. France
recognized Armenian genocide by the then imperial authorities in
2001. The French Armenian community has about 500,000 members.