Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Armenian President to visit France
by BBC News, Saturday, 3 February, 2001
Posted: Tuesday, February 06, 2001 01:28 am CST

The Armenian President Robert Kocharian is to pay an official visit to France later this month in a further sign of growing political contacts between the two countries.

The announcement came as Turkey barred another French firm from tendering for lucrative defence contracts, in retaliation for a new French law recognising as genocide the mass killing of Armenians in 1915 under the Ottoman Empire.

Turkey insists the Armenian death count of one and a half million people is inflated, although it concedes that an unspecified number of Armenians were killed or displaced during a period of civil unrest. In Iran, the parliament is due to consider a bill prepared by two ethnic Armenian MPs, which would formally recognise the 1915 massacre of Armenians as genocide.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service

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