Azernews.Az

Azerbaijan will oppose France’s co-chairmanship in the OSCE Minsk Group mediating talks on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict if Paris continues to support Armenia, defending the law criminalizing denial of the alleged "Armenian genocide" recently passed in its parliament, the country’s foreign minister said.

"France may support Armenia, but in this case its further involvement in the OSCE MG would be meaningless," Elmar Mammadyarov told EU-Turkey information network ABHaber (EUNews). 

The Minsk Group, co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France, has been mediating peace talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia since the two South Caucasus republics signed a precarious cease-fire in 1994 following a lengthy war.

Mammadyarov said the adoption of the law on the far-fetched "genocide" was unacceptable, noting that if France passes such legislation, it must also take into account that 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory has been occupied by Armenian armed forces.

"The Armenians themselves committed genocide in Khojaly [a town in Azerbaijan’s Nagorno Karabakh region where hundreds of civilians were brutally killed in February 1992] and invaded Azerbaijani land. France should consider these crimes committed by Armenia," the minister said.

The law, passed on January 23 in the Senate, France's upper house of parliament, makes it illegal to deny that the killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during World War I were genocide. The bill, which allows for a potential one-year prison sentence and a fine of up to 45,000 euros for those who deny the alleged genocide, must now be signed by President Nicolas Sarkozy to become law. 

But a group of French senators said they had asked the supreme constitutional council to examine the new law. The council is obliged to deliver its judgment within a month.