REINFELDT, BILDT CRITICIZED FOR NOT ADOPTING GENOCIDE RESOLUTION AS LAW

SR International – Radio Sweden
tssidor/artikel.asp?ProgramID=2054&format=1&am p;artikel=3560075
March 15 2010

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has spent Monday fending
off criticism for his statements that the government won’t adopt the
resolution on Turkish genocide as part of its foreign policy.

Social Democrat Sven-Erik Osterberg has now reported Reinfeldt’s
comments to the Committee on the Constitution to force the sitting
government to adopt the parliament’s new line on the alleged Turkish
genocide in 1915, when over a million Armenians and other ethnic
groups were killed.

Reinfeldt told TT on Monday night that he’s open to the prospect of
the Committee reviewing his statements.

"I have been very clear in that I regret the decision in the sense
that it’s bad timing given that a process of reconciliation is in the
works. But we will naturally analyze the decision that the parliament
has made," he said.

Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has also been very critical of the
parliament’s Thursday decision, and has mirrored Reinfeldt’s
statements that the constitution doesn’t force the government to
adopt a parliamentary measure.

Criticism of his actions has also come from the public sector. Hasan
Dölek, chairman of the Turkish National Organization in Sweden,
slammed Bildt for not personally trying to prevent parliament from
voting "aye" on the genocide classification.

"He has expressed regret about the decision to the Turkish prime
minister but he didn’t do anything himself," Dölek told news agency
TT. "Carl Bildt wasn’t even there in the parliament."

But Carl Bildt dismissed the criticism, telling TT that he had worked
for days to convince people to vote against the measure by pursuing
individual talks with parliamentarians.

"It led to the fact that the alliance parties came out in greater force
this time than last year" when it came to voting the proposition down,
Bildt maintains.

Carl Bildt’s surge of support was not enough to stymie the decision,
however, and whether Turkey will forgive the Swedish parliament the
vote and send back its ambassador remains to be seen.