ROW WITH FRANCE PROMPTS TURKS TO HALT GAS PIPELINE TALKS
Orhan Coskun In Ankara
Scotsman, UK
April 5 2007
TURKEY has suspended talks with Gaz de France over a pipeline that
would bring Caspian gas to Europe, in protest at a French bill on
the mass killings of Armenians during Ottoman rule, Turkish energy
officials said yesterday.
Nabucco is a 4.6 billion project to transport natural gas from Turkey
to Austria, passing through Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. The planned
pipeline – backed by the European Union and the United States – would
reduce Europe’s dependency on Russian gas, but has hit several hurdles.
France angered Ankara last year when its national assembly passed a
bill making it a crime to deny that mass killings of Armenians during
the First World War amounted to genocide.
Turkey denies claims that Ottoman Turks killed 1.5 million Armenians
during the First World War.
A senior Turkish energy ministry spokesman, who declined to be named,
said: "We will suspend partnership [with] Gaz de France until the
French presidential elections. We will decide according to policies
to be followed after the elections."
Jean-Baptiste Mattei, a spokesman for the French foreign ministry,
said no confirmation of the move had been recieved.
The four other countries involved in the project, Bulgaria, Romania,
Austria and Hungary, have already approved partnership with Gaz de
France in the project, which will transmit Caspian and Iranian gas
to Western Europe.
An EU diplomat in Ankara said the suspension may also be an attempt
by Turkey to warn the US about potential damages to bilateral ties if
a similar Armenian genocide bill, which is currently being discussed
in the US Congress, was approved.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
