Turkey's EU minister defines French resolution as racist, discriminative decision

ROME (A.A) - Turkey's European Union (EU) minister and chief negotiator defined on Friday the French resolution criminalizing denial of Armenian allegations regarding incidents of 1915 as a racist, discriminative and xenophobic decision. Egemen Bagis interviewed with Italy's La Repubblica newspaper, and said that French President Nicolas Sarkozy was against Turkey's EU membership, and he backed the resolution to win votes of 600,000 Armenians who were living in France. "They want to jeopardize our relations with Europe. This is a decision based on racism, discrimination and xenophobia," Bagis said.  Bagis said the French president took that step just for internal policy concerns, and noted that it would have been better if Sarkozy had left this historic issue to historians and worked on solution of economic crisis the EU was facing. "Turkish people are emotional, and will therefore show their reaction. We saw in the past, and they will choose outlets where they will shop and the companies with which they will fly," Bagis said. Bagis also said Turkish citizens were clever enough and they will decide on what to do on their own. The lower house of the French Parliament adopted on Thursday a resolution that criminalizes rejection of Armenian allegations pertaining to the incidents of 1915. Only 70 out of 577 parliamentarians joined the voting of the resolution which was adopted with majority of votes.  The resolution envisages "one-year prison term and 45,000 Euro fine for those who deny genocide recognized by French laws." French Parliament had recognized so-called Armenian genocide in 1915 on January 29, 2001. The draft criminalizing the rejection of Armenian allegations had first been approved in 2006, but it could not become a law as French President Nicolas Sarkozy prevented its presentation to Senate. Now, the senate's approval is necessary to make the resolution a law.  Turkey strongly opposes the issue of the incidents of 1915 being used as a tool in French politics. Many believe that French President Sarkozy supports the Armenian resolution in order to garner support from France's Armenian population that number around 500,000. France will hold the first round of next year's presidential election on April 22 and the second round run-off on May 6. Sarkozy is running for a second term. If the resolution is not adopted at the senate till February 22, 2012 when the parliament and senate will recess for presidential elections, it will be invalid.