Azg Daily, Armenia
March 24 2010

BULGARIA TO DISCUSS THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION IN A WEEK

By Hovik Afyan

"Azg" daily has already informed that Bulgarian Parliament will again
discuss the resolution on the Armenian Genocide committed in the
Ottoman Empire. The discussions are initiated by the Bulgarian Order,
Law and Justice Party

A month ago, the Parliament of Bulgaria rejected the resolution
justifying it by "Turkish-Bulgarian friendly relations" (and again no
denial of the Genocide ` H.A.).

According to the Bulgarian press, there is a strong possibility of
adopting the resolution this time that is conditioned by Erdogan’s
known statements in London.

The Armenian resolution submitted to the Bulgarian Parliament asserts
that "the Genocide committed against Armenians is one of the severest
crimes of the modern history; it is a crime against all mankind".

The resolution underlines that "the Ottoman Empire worked out and
implemented a government initiative to annihilate the Armenian ethnos
and expatriate from their historical motherland stretched from Ararat
to Anatolia". The resolution asserts that in 1915-1917 the Armenians
were severely killed, exiled and plundered by the Ottoman authorities.
"The Armenian peaceful population was forcibly exiled, and the
authorities took their property. A physical, economic and spiritual
genocide was committed against the Armenian ethnos, and as a result
about 1,5 million Armenians were killed. Taking into account the
above-mentioned, the Bulgarian Parliament recognizes the
irrefutability of the facts about the Armenian Genocide committed in
the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1917 and joins all the international
institutions and countries (EC, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy,
Holland and other countries) that have already recognized this fact".

At the end, the resolution states that Bulgaria doesn’t agree with
Turkish official position on denial of the Armenian Genocide. "We call
on Turkey to review its position on the real picture of the World War
I. We qualify the forcible exile and mass killings of Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire as Genocide. We consider necessary that this document
should be compulsory for all state institutions and mass media of
Bulgaria. We assume that Bulgarian and Armenian national monuments in
Turkey that are a part of the European civilization need more serious
preservation. We demand for taking into consideration the Bulgarian
authorities’ position during EU-Turkey negotiations – Turkey should
recognize the Armenian Genocide in order to be a member of the EU".