ARMENIA TO STEP UP "GENOCIDE" RECOGNITION DRIVE
By Hasmik Lazarian

Reuters, UK
April 24 2008

YEREVAN, April 24 (Reuters) – Armenia’s new president said on Thursday
he will seek "historic justice" for 1.5 million ethnic Armenians
killed by Ottoman Turks, claimed as a genocide by Yerevan and which
still affects relations with Turkey.

Turkey strongly denies Armenian claims, backed by many Western
historians, that the massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during
World War One amounted to a systematic genocide.

The issue has evolved into a source of tension that has complicated
Ankara’s relations with the United States and the European Union,
which Turkey is seeking to join.

President Serzh Sarksyan, who was sworn into office this month,
said in a speech to mark Armenia’s annual Genocide Day that securing
international condemnation of the killings nearly a century ago would
be a priority for his administration.

"As a result of the genocide that was planned and carried out by the
state in Ottoman Turkey, a vast number of Armenians were annihilated
on their native land and lost their living space," Sarksyan said in
a statement.

"International recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide is
an appropriate and inevitable part of Armenia’s foreign policy agenda,"
he said in the statement. "The Motherland of all Armenians, the
Republic of Armenia, should redouble its efforts for the restoration
of historic justice."

Thousands of Armenians — some with tears in their eyes — laid wreaths
of carnations and tulips in Yerevan at a memorial that honours those
who perished in the killings, which took place between 1915 and 1923.

The tiny ex-Soviet republic of Armenia is sandwiched between Turkey
and Azerbaijan in a region that is emerging as an important transit
route for oil exports from the Caspian Sea to world markets, although
Armenia has no pipelines of its own.

Armenia insists the killings should be declared a genocide and the
massacres have been recognised as such by some Western lawmakers.

But Ankara says large numbers of both Christian Armenians and Muslim
Turks were killed during the violent and chaotic break-up of the
Ottoman Empire. A law in Turkey makes it criminal offence to call
the killings a genocide.

Armenia and its neighbour Turkey have no diplomatic links, although
Turkish President Abdullah Gul this month sent a letter to Yerevan
calling for dialogue to normalise ties.

Turkey has kept its land border with Armenia closed since the early
1990s in protest at Yerevan’s occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh, a
slice of territory belonging to ally Azerbaijan which is populated
by ethnic Armenians. Turkey also objects to Yerevan’s claims on some
of its land.