Garo Posted April 21, 2001 Report Share Posted April 21, 2001 F.A.Z. BERLIN. Government sources said on Friday that Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Foreign Minister Joseph (Joschka) Fischer have yet to agree on whether the German parliament, the Bundestag, should debate and come to a resolution on the massacres committed by Turks against Armenians during World War I. The Bundestag recently handed over a petition with about 16,000 signatures to the Foreign Ministry. The petition requests that the Bundestag and the federal government follow the example of the French parliament, which first condemned the massacres as a genocide in 1998 and demanded an official apology from the Turkish government last November as a precondition for allowing Turkey to join the European Union. But according to Berlin sources, numerous German parliamentarians expressed reservations about "reopening wounds" in a letter to the government that accompanied the petition. The term "genocide" was avoided in the letter in favor of the more moderate "tragic events." Historians estimate that no fewer than 600,000 Armenians living in what was then still the Ottoman Empire were massacred during World War I, but the Turkish government denies this figure. © Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2001 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kazza Posted April 21, 2001 Report Share Posted April 21, 2001 WHHHAAT? The term "tragic events could be twisted around and interpteted as anything! The wounds need to be salted, they may hurt for a short while, but, it's the only way they can heal properly and quicker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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