Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

French Assembly passes Armenian genocide bill
by Reuters
Posted: Saturday, January 20, 2001 04:00 am CST

PARIS, Jan 18 (Reuters) - The French National Assembly unanimously passed a controversial bill on Thursday stating that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turkey in 1915 constituted genocide.

"France publicly recognises the Armenian genocide of 1915," the bill stated.

The vote in the lower house of the parliament came despite vigorous warnings >From Ankara, which has said the assembly would be committing a crime against history if it approved the bill.

The French upper house voted overwhelmingly in November to adopt the bill, which has troubled already difficult relations between the European Union and membership candidate Turkey.

Armenia and the Armenian diaspora accuse Turks of deliberately killing more than 1.5 million Armenians in eastern Anatolia as the Ottoman empire disintegrated in World War One.

Turkey disputes that figure and says casualties occurred on both sides in partisan fighting orchestrated by Russia.

France's 300,000-strong Armenian community, one of the largest in Europe, has provided a backbone of support for the French bill.

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