CHIRAC REGRETS BILL
7DAYS, United Arab Emirates
Oct 16 2006
French President Jacques Chirac expressed his regret to Turkey’s prime
minister over a French bill that insists the World War I massacres
of Armenians were genocide, Turkish media reported yesterday. "Mr
Chirac expressed to me this morning (Saturday) his regrets" and said
he understood the fierce reaction in Turkey to Thursday’s approval
of the bill by France’s lower house, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.
The bill, launched by MPs of France’s opposition Socialist party but
opposed by Chirac’s government, would make it an offence punishable
by jail to deny that the massacres carried out under Ottoman rule
constituted genocide. Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their people
were slaughtered, but Turkey rejects the use of the term "genocide",
saying some 300,000 Armenians died when the Ottoman Empire fell apart,
but at least as many Turks did too.
Speaking in Erdine, northwestern Turkey, Erdogan said Chirac had
promised to "do everything he could in the following process"
of readings through which the bill must pass before becoming law
in France.
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