BARROSO AGAINST PUTTING SO-CALLED GENOCIDE AS A PRECONDITION BEFORE TURKEY

Turkish Press
Sept 10 2006

BRUSSELS – European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has
announced that he is against conditioning Turkey’s EU membership on
recognition of so-called Armenian genocide.

In a meeting with representatives of the Reformist Movement (MR) at
the Belgian parliament, Barroso said that Turkey "cannot be forced"
to acknowledge the so-called genocide, and this cannot be put as an
additional precondition before Turkey.

Submitting a resolution to the Senate last summer, senators Francois
Roelands du Vivier and Christine Defraigne of MR proposed that
so-called Armenian genocide should be included within the framework of
the resolution on the Holocaust, and those who do not acknowledge it
should be sentenced up to one years in prison, and fined to 5,000 Euro.

The Belgian parliament shelved similar resolutions and motions after
debating them last year.

In the debates at the Senate’s Justice Committee, all other parties,
except MR and ECOLO (the Green Party in Belgium) expressed thought that
"a wrong legal step is being taken", "it is not Belgian’s business
to assess and judge historical incidents", and "recent positive step
taken by Ankara cannot be ignored".

The last resolution, presented to the Senate, has been suspended "for
some time" due to the local elections in Belgium due on October 8th,
and the reactions of the Turkish community.