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Paris Seeks To Calm Row Over Armenian 'Genocide' Bill

October 09, 2006

Artur Bagdasarian, speaker of the Armenian parliament, at the unveiling of a memorial to the Armenian 'genocide' in Marseille this April (epa)

October 9, 2006 -- French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy today phoned his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul to defuse tension over a bill making it a punishable offence to deny the "genocide" of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

Douste-Blazy said the government does not back the bill, which was tabled by the opposition Socialists.

Turkish government spokesman Cemil Cicek warned today that Ankara will retaliate if the French National Assembly passes the bill into law.

(dpa, AFP)

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Examining History

CALL IT GENOCIDE? Questions surrounding the mass killings of Armenians at the beginning of the last century continue to dominate relations between Armenia and Turkey. In April, Ankara proposed conducting a joint Armenian-Turkish investigation into the mass killings and deportations of Armenians during World War I.
Turkish leaders suggested that the two countries set up a joint commission of historians to determine whether the massacres carried out between 1915 and 1917 constituted genocide. Armenia, however, insisted it would continue to seek international recognition and condemnation of what it says was a deliberate attempt at exterminating an entire people....(more)

Armenia: Tragedy Remains On Europe’s Political Map

ARCHIVE: For a complete archive of RFE/RL's coverage of Armenia, click here.

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Paris Seeks To Calm Row Over Armenian 'Genocide' Bill

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