SR International – Radio Sweden
March 14 2010

Reinfeldt Reassures Erdogan

Updated 16:00

The Swedish Government continues to distance itself from the decision
in the Swedish parliament to recognise the deaths of Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire as genocide.

In a phone call on Saturday, Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt
ensured his Turkish counterparts Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he did not
agree with the decision.

"I said I regretted the decision in parliament because of the bad
timing, since a reconciliation process has started, which is seen as
important by both parties, Armenians and Turkey," Reinfeldt told
Swedish Radio News at a press conference on Sunday, which he had
called to explain his position.

Also in his conversation with Erdogan, Reinfeldt said he expressed his
concern over what he fears is "a new foreign policy" where historical
events are turned into party politics, rather than leaving it to
historians and academics to decide what has or has not happened – "as
we did before, in broad agreement with the Social Democrats".

With the Swedish Government being one of Turkey’s strongest backers in
its bid to join the European Union, Reinfeldt made sure to tell
Erdogan that Sweden would continue to back Turkey in this.

"Sweden is a fond supporter of the reform efforts that Prime Minister
Erdogan and his party represent in Turkey", Reinfeldt said. Efforts
that according to Reinfeldt "have lead to a reconciliation process
with Armenia, democracy initiative and opening up of issues regarding
minority rights."

Meanwhile, a Social Democratic newspaper has dug up an interview from
2006 with Reinfeldt where he – ahead of the Swedish elections that
year – supports the idea of defining the killings of Armenians in the
beginning of last century as genocide. That point of view seems to be
abandoned today.

Also on Saturday, at informal meeting of EU’s foreign ministers in
Finland, the foreign ministers of Turkey and Sweden jointly condemned
the vote, Reuters reports.

"It is regrettable because I think the politicisation of history
serves no useful purpose," the Swedish minister Carl Bildt told
reporters.

"We are interested in the business of reconciliation, and decisions
like that tend to raise tensions rather than lower tensions," he said.

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