ARMENIA SUSPENDS TURKEY DEAL
Story from BBC NEWS:
europe/8636800.stm
2010/04/22 09:52:36 GMT
Armenia’s ruling coalition has said it is halting the ratification
in parliament of landmark accords on normalising relations with Turkey.
They said it was because of Turkey’s refusal to "ratify the protocols
without preconditions and in a reasonable timeframe".
The countries signed a historic deal in 2009 to re-establish diplomatic
ties.
But ratification has stalled in both countries over the issue of the
World War I mass killings of Armenians.
"Considering the Turkish side’s refusal to fulfil the requirement
to ratify the accord without preconditions in a reasonable time,
making the continuation of the ratification process in the national
parliament pointless, we consider it necessary to suspend this
process," the statement said.
MASS KILLINGS OF ARMENIANS
Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians killed by Ottoman Turks
in 1915-6 Many historians and the Armenian people believe the
killings amount to genocide Turks and some historians deny they were
orchestrated More than 20 countries regard the massacres as genocide
Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in 1915, when they were
deported en masse from eastern Anatolia by the Ottoman Empire. They
were killed by troops or died from starvation and disease.
Armenia says up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed, but Turkey says
the figure is no more than one-third of that and that many Turks died
as well.
Turkey accepts that atrocities were committed but argues they were
part of the war and that there was no systematic attempt to destroy
the Christian Armenian people.
Armenia wants Turkey to recognise the killings as an act of genocide,
but successive Turkish governments have refused to do so.
Armenians have campaigned for the killings to be recognised
internationally as genocide – and more than 20 countries have done so.