Azernews.Az

PARIS – A French senator has said in parliament that it was unacceptable for the Armenians to use the alleged 1915 genocide to justify the occupation of internationally recognized Azerbaijani territories, voicing support for Baku’s position on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, the Azerbaijani embassy in France said Tuesday.

In a speech made last Wednesday during the discussion of a bill on criminal liability for denying the "Armenian genocide" in the Senate, Senator Nathalie Goulet stressed the importance of informing the French community that the Azerbaijanis have no bearing on this "genocide" allegedly committed in Ottoman Turkey.

Goulet said no one is discussing the real genocide committed not in the distant 1915, but in 1992 in Khojaly where many Azerbaijanis were killed during the Karabakh war.

At the end of her speech, the senator, on behalf of the Central Union Group which she represents, called on other senators to vote against this bill.

Goulet’s speech was accompanied by exclamations and cues of pro-Armenian senators who sought to put pressure on her.

Chairman of France-Caucasus friendship group of the French Senate, Senator Ambroise Dupont also opposed the bill. He urged senators to take into account that such a bill could damage relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan and weaken France’s position as co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group brokering settlement to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.

As expected, the draft law was rejected after heated discussions in the Senate, which were attended by Charles Aznavour and other influential public figures representing the Armenian diaspora. The senators voted 196 to 74 against the bill.

The bill, tabled in the French legislature by opposition Socialist Party, passed in the National Assembly on October 12, 2006 by 106 votes to 19. The draft law envisioned a one-year jail term and Euro 45,000 fine for those denying the alleged genocide occurred. The bill was further sent to the Senate, but the French government postponed discussions on the issue to avoid tarnishing its relations with Turkey.

According to historians, from 1915 to 1923, Armenians began an uprising, taking up arms against Turkey, and assisted Russia, one of Turkey’s enemies in WWI. To counter these actions, the Ottoman Empire decided to resettle the Armenians. However, the latter claim that their predecessors suffered "genocide" in the process. Ankara dismisses the claims and has repeatedly offered to research the events through a joint commission of historians.