Chirac 'Regrets' Armenian Genocide Bill

Turkish demonstrators outside the French consulate in Istanbul protesting on October 8 against the French 'Armenian genocide' bill (epa)
October 15, 2006 -- Turkey's semi-official Anatolia news agency today quotes Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as saying that French President Jacques Chirac has expressed his regret to him about a French bill that insists the World War I massacres of Armenians were genocide.

The bill, passed on October 12, makes it a crime to deny that the 1915-17 massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks constituted genocide.

The bill still has to undergo a vote in the Senate and a second assembly reading before being passed into law.

(AFP)