Chirac Attends Memorial For Armenian Massacres
September 30, 2006
September 30, 2006 -- French President Jacques Chirac, on a visit to Yerevan, today attended a ceremony for the victims of the 1915-17 mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey.
AFP quotes Chirac as saying Turkey should recognize the massacres as genocide before its possible accession to the European Union.
In 2001, France officially recognized the World War I mass killings as genocide, which strained its relations with EU aspirant Turkey.
Turkey argues that the hundreds of thousands of Armenians that were killed died as part of an internal conflict and rejects the claim of genocide.
Also today, Chirac called for a peaceful resolution to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Chirac arrived in Armenia on September 29 for a three-day visit.
(ITAR-TASS, AFP)