ROYAL SAYS TURKEY MUST RECOGNISE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
By Kerstin Gehmlich

Reuters, UK
Oct 11 2006

PARIS, Oct 11 (Reuters) – Turkey has to recognise Armenians suffered
genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks if it wants to enter the
European Union, French Socialist presidential frontrunner Segolene
Royal said on Wednesday.

Royal, who heads opinion polls to become the leftist party’s candidate
for next year’s presidential poll, did not say whether she personally
supported Turkey’s EU membership, saying the French people would
decide the issue in a referendum.

"If Turkey should one day confirm its candidacy and enter Europe,
it is obvious that it must recognise the Armenian genocide," Royal
told a press conference.

Royal was speaking just a day before the French parliament was to
vote on a bill that will impose prison terms on anyone who denies
the 1915 genocide of Armenians took place.

The bill, proposed by Royal’s Socialist party, has strained relations
between Paris and Ankara, with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan
telling France to examine its own colonial past.

Ankara denies that some 1.5 million Armenians perished in a systematic
genocide last century, saying large numbers of both Christian Armenians
and Muslim Turks died in a partisan conflict raging at that time.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said he hoped France, "a country
of freedoms", would not become "a country where people are jailed
for expressing views and releasing documents".

"If this bill is passed, Turkey will not lose anything but France
will lose Turkey and it will no longer remain as France that boasts
the values I mentioned," Gul told reporters.

The European Commission has criticised the French bill, saying it
undermines its efforts to persuade Turkey to increase freedom of
expression by scrapping article 301 of the penal code used against
Turkish intellectuals and writers.

NO LECTURING

Turkey began EU entry talks last October and France is especially
cool on taking in the large, mainly Muslim nation.

Royal said France had also found it painful to deal with darker
chapters of its past.

"It’s not easy for certain countries to recognise a number of actions
or episodes that are totally counter to the respect of human dignity,"
she said.

Asked whether she personally supported Turkey’s entry into the EU,
Royal said the French people would decide this issue in a referendum.

Royal’s likely conservative competitor for the 2007 poll, Interior
Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, is a long-standing opponent of Turkey’s
EU entry.

Some deputies in Sarkozy’s UMP party say there is no need for the
controversial bill, but the mood has toughened since President Jacques
Chirac visited Armenia last month and said Turkey should recognise
the genocide before joining the EU.

UMP party officials expect around 60 of their 362 parliamentarians
to back the motion, with most of the rest likely to skip the debate,
handing victory to the Socialists.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress