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My pleasure
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Nicolas Sarkozy: I will do my utmost to strengthen friendship between Armenian and French people
15.06.2007 13:14 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ “It’s an honor for me to receive your congratulatory address on occasion of my election President of France. I will do my utmost to merit your trust,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a letter in response to congratulation issued by His Holiness Aram I, Catholicos of Cilicia. “I will do my utmost to strengthen friendship between Armenian and French people and will advocate human values, which make this friendship firmer. France’s attitude towards the Armenian people remains unchangeable. I am convinced that recognition of the Armenian Genocide is the moral responsibility of Turkey. I assure you that I will henceforth be determined on the issue,” Mr Sarkozy’s letter says.
“To support Lebanon was one of my election pledges. In the name of the centuries-old French-Lebanese friendship, France will always defend the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Lebanon. It will be a great pleasure and honor for me to meet you during your visit to France or within the framework of my visit to Lebanon,” the letter says, the Chancellery of the Cilician Catholicosate reported.General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”Comment
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Just say NO!...or NON!
Armenian PM tells EU: too soon to make Turkey a member
Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:24am EDT
By Dmitry Solovyov
MOSCOW, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Armenia said on Tuesday the European Union would be making a "strange" decision if it admitted Turkey before Ankara had made progress in settling disputes with Yerevan.
Turkey shut its borders with its tiny neighbour Armenia in 1993 in protest at Armenian forces' capture of territory inside Azerbaijan, Ankara's historic Muslim ally, during fighting over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The two countries are also at odds over Anakara's refusal to acknowledge as genocide the massacre of large numbers of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey at the start of the last century. Turkey has no diplomatic ties with the former Soviet republic.
"I believe it would be very strange for the Europeans to accept to their family a country which sometimes employs principles running counter to the principles of the European Union," Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sarksyan said.
But Sarksyan, speaking at a news briefing during a visit to Russia, a close ally, said he believed the EU application would pressure Ankara into changing its stance on the border with Armenia and on diplomatic relations.
"I believe ... the more time passes the harder it gets for them to stick to this position, because Turkey aspires to join the European Union and faces a long negotiation process."
"So the ball is in Turkey's yard, nothing depends on us," said Sarksyan, a close ally of Armenian President Robert Kocharyan. Many observers expect that when Kocharyan steps down next year, Sarksyan will replace him as president.
Armenians and some European nations describe the 1915-17 killings of Armenians, as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, as genocide. Turkey maintains they were part of a partisan conflict in which many Turks, Armenians and other nationalities died.
It is a crime in Turkey to call the killings genocide.
Earlier this year a French parliamentary bill making it a crime to deny the killings were genocide soured relations between Paris and Ankara. Turkey suspended talks on a major gas pipeline with Gaz de France in protest at the bill.General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”Comment
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Netherlands: CDA party rebukes genocide deniers
- Osman Elmaci, Armenian Genocide Denier, will not become a Member of European Parliament
- The rapporteur on the current EU-Turkey resolution is also a member of the CDA Party
The Christian-Democrat party in the Netherlands, the CDA (Christian Democrat Appel), has announced that Mr. Osman Elmaci has been turned down from having a seat in the European Parliament due to his attitude toward and his remarks denying the Armenian Genocide.
Mr. Elmaci, who had already been ousted from the last legislative elections for the same reasons, was the number three person behind the current MEP Joop Post, who has resigned. He was to become a Member of the European Parliament after the withdrawal of Mr. Bartho Pronk’s candidacy. CDA leaders, already having a past record of principled stance against genocide denial, vetoed this possibility. Mr. Post will finally be replaced by Mr. Cornelis Visseur.
"We congratulate the CDA party for this courageous and visionary political decision. Denial – under the pretext of ’freedom of expression’ – can only serve to perpetuate the racial hatred from which it derives,” declared Laurent Leylekian, Executive Director of the European Armenian Federation.
The European Armenian Federation is actively working to make denialist hatred a pan-European crime, as proposed in the framework decision on racism and xenophobia recently adopted by the European Council. The Federation notes that bills aimed at making the denial of the Armenian Genocide a crime are under consideration in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, the project was initiated by Christen Unie, a founding member of the government coalition. In Switzerland, Dogu Perinçek, a well-known denier of the Armenian Genocide has already been condemned.
The Federation also notes that the rapporteur of the current resolution on EU-Turkey relations, Mrs. Oomen-Ruijten – who is also a member of the CDA party – has attempted to evade the Armenian Genocide issue in that resolution.
“Avoiding the genocide issue in this resolution is as serious as the open denial of Mr. Elmaci. In fact, it constitutes a form of denial that is more perverse and now more prevalent, that is denial by omission,” added Leylekian.
“We call on the CDA party to treat Mrs. Oomen-Ruijten’s case with the same moral demands it made with Mr. Elmaci, i.e. by charging her to comply with her own party line in the combat against any form of denial,” concluded Leylekian.
General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”Comment
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