Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 18 2008
Bulgarian lawmakers vote against bill backing Armenian `genocide’
claims
Members of the Bulgarian parliament have rejected once again a bill
for officially recognizing the controversial World War I era killings
of Anatolian Armenians as genocide.
The bill, drawn up by members of the extreme-right Attack Party, was
rejected yesterday with 63 to 50 votes, while 60 lawmakers abstained
from voting. This is the third time the bill has been rejected.
Armenians claim that up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered
in orchestrated killings during the last years of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkey categorically rejects the claims, saying that 300,000
Armenians along with at least as many Turks died in civil strife
emerging when the Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern
Anatolia and sided with the Russian troops who were invading Ottoman
lands.
Bringing such a bill onto the agenda of the Bulgarian parliament is
disrespectful to both the historical facts and the parliament, Remzi
Osman, of the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms, told
the Anatolia news agency. "It is not the duty of parliaments to
evaluate and judge history. We should leave history to the
historians," Osman said.
Alexandar Radoslavov of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, which rejected
the bill, told the parliament that a "feeling of hatred" was the
motive behind this bill. "Hatred should not be used in a parliament
as a political argument. This doesn’t contribute to either humanity
or peace," Radoslavov was quoted as saying by Anatolia.
The Attack Party, meanwhile, announced it would continue bringing the
bill before the parliament until it is adopted.
18.01.2008
Today’s Zaman with wires Ankara