06 10 05 - Turkey throws rejects Chirac's call to recognize the Armenian genocide

Jean Eckian relayed from AP
Turkey throws rejects Chirac's call to recognize the Armenian genocide Turkey threw rejected on Tuesday the call launched on Saturday by the French president Jacques Chirac to recognize the Armenian genocide
before being able to adhere to the European Union.
In a official statement, the Turkish Foreign Ministry clarifies that these comments, held by Jacques Chirac during his first state visit in Armenia had been " received with a profound sadness ".
" Turkey Has to recognize the Armenian genocide to enter the Union? ", had said Jacques Chirac, resuming(taking back) a question of a journalist. " Honestly, I believe it. Any country increases by
recognizing its dramas and its errors ". " When besides it is a question of becoming integrated into a set(group) which claims the membership in the same company(society) and the faith in the same values, I think effectively that Turkey would be inspired well to pull(fire) the consequences ", judged Jacques Chirac, personally favorable to the Turkish embership(support).
According to the Armenians, up to 1,5 million theirs were massacred in 1915-17, in the last surges of the Ottoman Empire in the agony.
In France, the Parliament adopted on January 29th, 2001 a law recognizing the Armenian genocide. Ankara, which always refuses to speak about genocide, recognized for its part that massacres had taken place well, but on both sides, and disputes figures. " It is not possible to accept the definition of 'genocide' of the French president about the incidents of 1915 which took place in the conditions of the First world war, and which were interpreted by numerous international historic experts very differently from what assert the Armenians ", pursues the statement of the Turkish diplomacy.
The Foreign Ministry adds that the remarks of the president Chirac caused a justified " reaction " Turks, because giving the impression that this question of the recognition of Armenian genocide was a part of conditions put in Turkey to enter the European Union.
And to add: " last year, when the practices of his country at the time of the colonialism were for the international agenda, the president Chirac said that ' the historic incidents should be left with the istorians ' ".
The Turkish statement makes reference to the debate started in February, 2005 by a French text of law evoking the " positive role of the colonization ", which has create a deep crisis with Algeria. The Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika had since employee the term of "genocide" for the crimes committed during the colonization. Jacques Chirac had in the period considered when " it is not for the law to write the history ", before deciding on the abolition of the incriminated article.
"the point of view of the European Union on the question is that the recognition of the Armenian genocide is not a condition of membership to the Union", said Mr. Rehn to the journalists at the first day of a visit in Turkey. The recognition of the Armenian genocide is not a condition with the entry of Turkey in the EU, affirmed Tuesday the European commissioner chief Widening Olli Rehn, catching on the wrong foot French president Jacques Chirac who had expressed an opposite opinion.
The remarks of Mr. Chirac were criticized by the president of the parliamentary Parliament of the Council of Europe (APCE), Rene van der Linden, who estimated that the "on cannot change the rules of the game in the medium of the play". It also supported the Turkish proposal to create a joint committee historians Turkish and Armenians to study the massacres which have occurred in the last years of the Ottoman empire which in 1923 the Republic of Turkey succeeded. "It is a much better way of treating EC significant historical question than to launch ultimata", estimated the person in charge European.

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