STATUE COMMEMORATING WORLD WAR I ERA MASSACRE OF ARMENIANS STOLEN

The Associated Press
October 14, 2006 Saturday 4:24 PM GMT

A statue commemorating the World War I-era massacre of Armenians in
Turkey was stolen, an official said Saturday, two days after French
lawmakers approved a bill that would make it a crime to deny that
the killings amounted to genocide.

The bronze monument, installed in front of the train station in the
Paris suburb of Chaville in 2002, disappeared between Friday night
and Saturday morning, said authorities for the Haut-de-Seine region.

The police have not ruled out the possibility that the statue, which
weighs several hundred pounds, was stolen to be sold as scrap metal,
said Stephane Topalian, who serves on the board of the local chapter
of the Armenian church.

However, Topalian stressed the timing of the robbery, which came
after France’s lower house of parliament on Thursday passed a bill
that make it a crime to deny the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman
Turks around the time of World War I amounted to genocide.

Under the bill, those who contest it was genocide would risk up to
a year in prison.

The legislation, which infuriated Turkey, passed 106-19.

President Jacques Chirac’s government opposed the bill, although it
did not use its majority in the lower house to vote it down. Instead,
most ruling party lawmakers did not vote on the text that was brought
by the opposition Socialist Party.

It still needs to be approved by the French Senate and the president
to become law.

Armenia accuses Turkey of massacring Armenians during World War I,
when Armenia was under the Ottoman Empire. Turkey says Armenians
were killed in civil unrest during the collapse of the empire, and
strongly objects to the killings being called genocide.