ADMIT GENOCIDE BEFORE JOINING EU, CHIRAC TELLS TURKEY
The News – International, Pakistan
Sept 30 2006
YEREVAN: French President Jacques Chirac on Saturday urged Turkey
to recognise World War I-era massacres of Armenians as genocide if
it wants to join the European Union, speaking during a visit to the
Armenian capital.
In comments that are likely to irritate Ankara and put a further
strain on its relations with France, Chirac told a news conference
Turkey needed to face up to its Ottoman past in response to a question
on the nation’s EU ambitions.
Asked if he thought Turkey should recognise the 1915-1917 massacres
as genocide before it joins the EU, the French president replied:
"Honestly, I believe so." "All countries grow up acknowledging
their dramas and their errors," said Chirac, who is on a two-day
visit to Armenia, where he has paid homage to Yerevan’s "genocide"
memorial and attended the inauguration of a "France Square" in central
Yerevan. Until now, France had refused to make a direct link between
the genocide issue and Turkey’s EU membership bid. The bloc has not
made it a condition of entry.
But a response to the same question by Chirac’s Armenian counterpart
Robert Kocharian was markedly softer, reflecting Armenia’s desire to
mend ties with its neighbour and improve its struggling economy.
"We don’t see any danger in this process," Kocharian said of Turkey’s
EU aspirations, "but we would like that our interests would be
discussed in the process too," he added. Kocharian said it would be
in Armenia’s interests to have a neighbour "with a value system that
allows for free movement and open borders."
France, which has 400,000 citizens of Armenian descent, officially
recognized the events as genocide in 2001, putting a strain on its
relations with fellow Nato member Turkey. A proposal by France’s
socialists to make genocide denial a crime punishable by a year in
prison and a 45,000-euro fine has elicited further ire in Turkey,
but Chirac said he did not support the proposal.
"France has fully recognised the tragedy of the genocide and all
the rest is more like polemics than legislative reality," he said of
the proposal.
Armenia has campaigned for Turkey to recognise the WWI massacres,
in which it says 1.5 million Armenians died, as genocide. But Turkey
argues that that 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died
in an internal conflict sparked by attempts by Armenians to win
independence in eastern Anatolia. Today’s Armenia is in an unenviable
geopolitical position. Flanked to the south-west by historical
foe Turkey, its eastern borders press up against Azerbaijan, with
which Yerevan is still technically at war over the Nagorny Karabakh
enclave. As a result, its only access to the outside world is through
Iran and Georgia.
But as relations between Russia and Georgia sour, exemplified by
this week’s Russian-spy row in Tbilisi, transporting Russian goods
to Moscow’s ally Armenia has become more difficult. "Armenia is very
interested in the normalization of Georgian-Russian relations because
it directly effects our economy," Kocharian said.
Chirac, whose country makes up part of the so-called Minsk Group of
mediators between Armenia and Azerbaijan, has tried to personally
intervene in their conflict by meeting both presidents in Paris
earlier this year.
A framework agreement on the resolution of the territorial dispute
was widely hoped for during a Paris meeting between the two Caucasus
presidents, however no visible progress was made. Chirac defended
the Minsk Group, which Azerbaijan has criticised, saying its experts
"have done good work, of course in an infinitely complex situation."