SWEDEN TO VOTE ON RECOGNIZING ARMENIAN KILLINGS AS ‘GENOCIDE’

Today’s Zaman
Feb 16 2010
Turkey

Turkey faces another threat of "genocide" recognition as the Swedish
Parliament prepares to vote on a motion that describes the killing of
Armenians, Assyrians and Chaldeans during the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire as "genocide."

Ankara is also highly uncomfortable with a planned vote in a US
congressional committee in April on a resolution to label the World
War I-era killings of Armenians in the late Ottoman era as "genocide."

Turkish Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Murat
Mercan, Justice and Development Party (AK Party) deputies Necip
Taylan and Å~^aban DiÅ~_li, Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) deputy
Canan Arıtman and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) deputy Deniz
BölukbaÅ~_ı were informed about the situation during an official
visit to the country last week.

The Turkish politicians warned Swedish authorities that voting
on such a motion in the Swedish Parliament would damage bilateral
relations and make the approval of protocols signed by Turkey and
Armenia more difficult.

In October 2009, Turkey and Armenia signed an agreement in Zurich
that aimed to normalize relations between the two estranged neighbors.

Approval of the motion is backed by the opposition Swedish Social
Democratic Party, which proposed the motion, and the government’s
rightist coalition partners. A similar motion that recognizes the
1915 killings as "genocide" was not approved by the Swedish Parliament
in 2007.

As parliamentary elections will be held in September in Sweden, the
current parliament has to handle all the motions before the elections.

Diplomatic sources, speaking to Today’s Zaman, said the motion will
be handled by the parliament in two weeks. A Swedish Social Democratic
Party official who declined to be named said it was out of the question
for his party to vote against the motion, without elaborating.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress