SOFIA CITY COUNCIL FAILS TO VOTE ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Sofia News Agency
565
April 24 2008
Bulgaria

Earlier on Thursday Sofia News Agency incorrectly reported that the
Sofia City Council had recognized the Armenian Genocide during its
weekly meeting. We apologize deeply for the mistake.

The proposed voting of the Declaration expressing sympathy with the
tragedy of the Armenian people it in the Ottoman Empire ended in
a scandal on the international Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day
(April 24).

The members of the Sofia City Council from the Democrats for Strong
Bulgaria party left in protest as the majority voted to remove the
voting of the proposed Declaration from the agenda of Thursday’s
meeting.

The text of the proposed Declaration was read At the beginning of the
meeting. It states that the murder of 1,5 million Armenians and the
mass expulsion of millions of others from their homes by the Ottomans
was a proven historical fact.

The City Council spent a minute of silence remembering the victims of
the Armenian Genocide but the expected voting failed to take place
after the representatives of the Sofia Mayor’s GERB party voted to
take it off the agenda.

"With this failure to denounce the Armenian Genocide, the Sofia
Mayor Boyko Borisov bowed his head before Turkey", said Vili Lilkov,
a city counsellor from the rightist Democrats for Strong Bulgaria
(DSB) party of former PM Ivan Kostov as he was leaving the meeting.

He added that in this way Borisov had also defied the demands of the
Armenians living in Sofia.

"I don’t want to confront Turkey. We have done everything necessary
to recognize and condemn the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire
in 1915-1922 but the DSB wants to cause confrontation with Turkey",
the Sofia Mayor and GERB party leader Boyko Borisov retorted.

He added that he had met with representatives of the Armenian community
in Sofia and had expressed his sympathies to them regarding the
remembrance of the genocide.

The GERB City Counsellor Angel Dzhambazki declared that the Sofia City
Council had in fact no authority to denounce the Armenian Genocide,
and that this could be done only by the national Parliament. In his
words, the DSB representatives were either mistaken, or had not read
the statutes of the City Council.

Three other Bulgarian cities have already recognized the Armenian
Genocide in the Ottoman Empire.

The northeastern city of Silistra did so on April 17, and the city
of Ruse accepted the same day a declaration condemning the genocide
against both Armenians and Bulgarians by the Ottoman Turks. The
city of Burgas was the first to recognize the Armenian Genocide
in February, which caused the Turkish city of Edirne to sever all
bilateral relations.