FRANCE SHELVES SENSITIVE ARMENIAN BILL VOTE

New Anatolian, Turkey
May 19 2006

The French Parliament on Thursday indefinitely postponed voting on
a controversial bill that aimed to introduce prison terms to those
who question the Armenian genocide claims.

During yesterday’s special session of Parliament, several deputies
from the Socialist Party, which prepared the bill, as well as ruling
Union for Popular Movement (UMP) deputies, who criticized the bill,
took the floor, and the debate lasted longer than planned.

Parliament Speaker Jean Louis Debre closed the session without
holding a vote, saying that they had run out of time due to the long
debate. Under the rules of the French Parliament, the bill can’t
return to Parliament’s agenda before its next term, which opens in
October. The socialists are not able to bring the same bill to the
floor, and so they would be forced to prepare a new one.

The bill, which proposed to make denial of the Armenian genocide claims
a crime by introducing up to a year’s imprisonment and a fine of up
to 45,000 euros for those who question the controversial issue, was
brought to the Parliament floor for debate by the socialists. As the
postponement sparked criticism by mainly socialist parliamentarians,
dozens of members of Armenian groups yelled, “The vote! The vote!” and
pounded their fists for five minutes from a balcony over the assembly
floor.

Douste-Blazy rejects bill, but uses term ‘genocide’

During debate yesterday, French Foreign Minister Phillipe Douste-Blazy
opposed any step towards approval of the Armenian bill, underlining
that it would seriously harm reconciliation efforts by Turks and
Armenians, but he did use the sensitive term “genocide” while referring
to the brutal events of 1915.

“Armenians are right in their ‘genocide’ case and they have the right
to defend it. But I don’t believe that this bill will have positive
consequences,” Douste-Blazy said in his address to the Parliament.

Taking the floor in the name of the French government, the
foreign minister urged the Parliament not to trespass on the duty
of historians. He stressed that passage of the bill would harm
reconciliation efforts between Turkey and Armenia, two countries that
have no diplomatic relations.

Referring to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s suggestion
to establish commissions composed of both Turkish and Armenian
historians to study the controversial events of 1915, Douste-Blazy
called on France to give Turks and Armenians the opportunity to
determine their joint history.

He also urged France to follow a policy towards the promotion of
peace and reconciliation, citing the fact that some 300,000 Turks are
living in France and the two countries have historic, economic, and
cultural ties. The French foreign minister’s speech sparked criticism
from deputies supporting passage of the bill.

Armenians accuse the Ottoman Empire of deliberately massacring up to
1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1919. Turkey stresses that
these figures are inflated and says that far fewer Armenians died,
due to civil unrest under the conditions of World War I and the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Ankara suspended its diplomatic
relations with Yerevan a decade ago due to Armenian occupation of
the Azeri territories of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Turkey expects France to drop bill from agenda

Turkey welcomed the shelving of the bill, but also called on France
to drop the debate from Parliament’s agenda altogether and instead
support the Turkish suggestion to establish a joint historians’
commission to study the 1915 events.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry made its request public in a written
statement following the decision to shelve debate over the bill.

Referring to the opposition of French historians, public opinion
and Foreign Minister Douste-Blazy to the bill, the statement said:
“Our expectations from France is that they drop the bill from
Parliament’s agenda and support the Turkish suggestion to establish
a joint commission composed of Turkish and Armenian historians to
investigate in detail the events of 1915, by studying the archives
that will be made public later on.”