BRITAIN – GOVERNMENTS ‘MISLED MPS FOR TURKEY’

Morning Star
November 5, 2009 Thursday
UK

Successive British governments have deliberately misled Parliament
over the 1915 Armenian genocide, a top lawyer has charged.

Geoffrey Robinson QC said that evidence recently released under the
Freedom of Information Act revealed that unwillingness to antagonise
Turkey’s "neuralgic" – or mentally unstable – attitude towards genocide
was behind Britain’s failure to acknowledge the atrocity.

The documents state: "Her Majesty’s government is open to criticism
in terms of the ethical dimension. But given the importance of our
relations with Turkey, the current line is the only feasible option."

The government had insisted that historians were divided on the issue,
but Mr Robinson found that no genocide experts – including historians –
had ever been consulted by a British government.

Within four weeks of the documents’ release, the policy had changed and
references to historians being divided on the issue had been discarded.