Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
March 14 2010
British parliament takes center stage in ‘genocide’ recognition row
Sunday, March 14, 2010
ANKARA ` Hürriyet
Following the Swedish parliament’s adoption Thursday of an Armenian
`genocide’ resolution, many people who support using this terminology
for the Ottoman-era deaths in 1915 are looking to Britain next.
A second reading of a resolution in the British parliament will held
April 30 before it is submitted to a House of Commons committee. If it
is approved, an `Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day’ will be
established in the country.
The resolution approved by the Swedish parliament Thursday recognized
as `genocide’ the killings of Armenians and other Christian minorities
during the final days of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey has long denied
that the deaths constituted genocide, arguing that both Armenians and
Turks were killed in civil strife.
The British committee is scheduled to hold its last evaluation in late
March; the first reading of the draft was made Jan. 6. A similar draft
will follow the same process in the British House of Lords.
If the resolution is approved, it will be submitted to the queen of
England. If she does not reject the proposal, it will become legal and
Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day will be officially recognized in the
country.
Though Labour Party deputy Andrew Dismore and 11 other English
parliamentarians support the proposal, one local politician says the
resolution will fail, citing two reasons.
First, the make-up of the parliament will change after the May 6
elections, said Nilgün Canver, a member of the Haringey city council
and the founder of the parliamentary group of friends from the Labour
Party. She added that none of the political parties in Britain want to
risk angering Turkey, daily Hürriyet reported.
`The resolution supporters are the members of a small group that
opposes Turkey,’ Canver told Hürriyet. `There is no chance for the
approval of the resolution in the British House of Lords.’
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress