BRITISH MINISTER TELLS TURKISH LEADERS PARLIAMENT UNLIKELY TO ADOPT ARMENIAN BILL
Anadolu Agency
March 16 2010
Turkey
London, 16 March: British Justice Minister Jack Straw reassured Turkey
that the bill on Armenian allegations would not be adopted at the
House of Commons.
Addressing the working lunch of the Turkey-England Business forum [on]
Tuesday [16 March] attended by Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and other senior Turkish
officials, Straw said the chances that the bill would be adopted
was zero.
He said only one of the 651 members of the House of Commons backed the
bill, noting that neither the government nor the opposition supported
the bill.
Straw, who reiterated England’s support to Turkey’s EU bid, said the
EU needed Turkey as mush as Turkey needed EU.
A similar bill recognizing the tragic events of 1915 – which took
place shortly before the fall of the Ottoman Empire – as genocide
was recently adopted by the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs
and the Swedish parliament, straining relations between Turkey and
these countries.
Turkey, which strongly rejects the genocide allegations and regards the
events as civil strife in wartime which claimed lives of many Turks
and Armenians, severely criticized the resolutions, warning that it
would jeopardize the historic rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia.