Agence France Presse — English
October 13, 2006 Friday 7:22 AM GMT

French vote won’t hurt Turkey’s EU membership bid: EU commissioner

The French parliament’s adoption of a bill making it a crime to deny
that the 1915-1917 massacres of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks
constituted genocide will not affect Turkey’s EU membership bid, a
senior EU official said Friday.

"One thing is what happens in France, (a) second thing is what we are
doing as (the) European Union with a candidate country," External
Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero Waldner told Finnish television
YLE.

"In France … (the issue of the Armenian genocide) has come up from
time to time because there is a strong community there that always
very strongly comes up with this issue," she said.

The French parliament on Thursday approved a bill that would make it
a crime to deny that the 1915-1917 massacres of Armenians was
genocide.

The crime would carry a prison sentence of up to one year and a fine
of up to 45,000 euros.

The French vote provoked protests from Turkey and dissent from the
European Union.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their ancestors were slaughtered
in orchestrated killings that they say can only be seen as genocide,
while Turkey says 300,000 Armenians died when the Ottoman Empire fell
apart during World War I.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress