French minister accuses Turkey of revisionism over Armenian “genocide”
Sources: Europe No 1 radio, Paris, in French 1100 gmt 24 Apr 05;
French news agency AFP, Paris, in French 0857 gmt, 1622 gmt 24 Apr 05
With regard to the commemoration of the Armenian genocide in 1915,
tens of thousands of people have been meditating since this morning in
Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, in front of the monument to the
victims. [Passage omitted]
This morning Trade Minister Patrick Devedjian [title as heard – is in
fact minister-delegate in charge of industry], whom we mentioned a
short while ago and who is of Armenian origin, denounced state
revisionism on the part of Turkey.
[The French news agency AFP reported earlier that Patrick Devedjian
had “denounced Turkey’s ‘state revisionism'” during the programme
Parlons-en (Let’s talk about it) of the parliamentary TV channel
LCP. The agency quoted the minister as saying that it was not a
question of “recognizing Turkey’s guilt but the fact that a genocide
occurred”.
In a later report, AFP quoted Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande
as saying that the opposition Socialist group in the National Assembly
was going to “propose a law making denial of the Armenian genocide
punishable”.
According to AFP, in an address to an audience of 3,000 French people,
mostly of Armenian origin, Francois Hollande added that “if there is
no recognition of the genocide, there won’t be any accession of Turkey
to Europe. This is a clear, unambiguous position.”]