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German government won't comment on Armenian genocide resolution
Berlin -- The German government on Friday declined to comment on a resolution proposed to parliament which declares the 1915-17 Armenian massacres in Ottoman Turkey to be genocide.
"I must ask the chancellor about this," said Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's normally well-briefed spokesman, Uwe-Karsten Heye.
Foreign ministry deputy spokeswoman Sabine Sparwasser also declined to comment: "I cannot yet say anything on the view of the foreign minister."
The Armenian genocide bill was presented to the German parliament and government by Uwe Hiksch, a member of the opposition Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) - the renamed East German communist party.
The declaration calls on Germany to formally recognize the killing of Armenians during the First World War by Ottoman Turks as genocide and says Berlin has to apologise for the role played by Germany's armed forces in the slayings.
Estimates of the number of Armenians who were killed or died during Ottoman deportations from 1915 to 1917 range widely. Turkish sources say 300,000 died while Armenians and some historians say the death toll was 1.5 million.
Turkey has argued the deaths took place as part of the conflict, but Armenians and others say they were a planned and systematic genocide. Armenians were a Christian minority in mainly Islamic Turkey.
Hiksch says German troops - which were allied with Turkey during the war - helped with Armenian deportations and used their artillery to attack Armenians.
A self-described "friend of Turkey," Hiksch says the resolution is not intended to be anti-Turkish but rather aimed at helping Ankara come to terms with acts carried out during a previous government in its colonial past.
Turkey has reacted with deep anger to similar genocide resolutions approved by France and other countries.
The government in Ankara slapped a virtual trade embargo on France after French President Jacques Chirac signed the resolution into law last January.
A United States Armenian genocide resolution bill was withdrawn last year after former president Bill Clinton gave in to strong Turkish lobbying.
Observers say Germany has a deeply held fear of approving such a resolution.
There are some 2.1 million Turks living in Germany - the biggest single foreign community. It remains unclear how this minority would react to such a resolution. In contrast the Armenian community in Germany is far smaller and numbers between 30,000 and 35,000.
This helps explain why the only German political party backing the resolution so far is the tiny PDS.
Unless support for the declaration can be built across party lines it will
have no chance of winning approval in the German parliament's lower house,
the Bundestag.
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