|
Armenian President Visits France After Recognition Of Genocide
PARIS, Feb 12 (News Agencies) - Armenian President Robert Kocharian arrived in France for a five-day state visit Monday, buoyed by the French parliament's adoption of a bill recognizing as genocide the killings of Armenians in the last days of the Ottoman Empire.
In an interview, Kocharian said he was grateful to France for passing the new law, which has caused a deep strain in relations between France and Armenia's historic rival Turkey.
"France's international weight lifts the process of recognition onto a new plain," he said. Turkey responded angrily to the bill when it was passed in the French National Assembly three weeks ago, banning French firms from bidding for several Turkish public contracts and suspending contacts with the French military.
Anxious to mend relations with Ankara, the French government has stressed that the law was an independent initiative of parliament, and officials said the genocide issue would not form a major topic for discussion during Kocharian's visit, set to focus on economic and security affairs.
Kocharian, who is accompanied by his foreign, industry and culture ministers, was to dine with President Jacques Chirac later Monday, and have further meetings during the week with Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and the speakers of the two houses of parliament.
He will also see members of the 350,000-strong Armenian diaspora in France, and on Thursday travel to the southeastern city of Lyon where the largest community is based.
Kocharian said in a newspaper interview Monday that while political relations were "active enough," the aim of his visit - the first state visit by an Armenian president since independence in 1991 - was to stimulate French economic interest.
"The groundwork's been done. In Armenia we have 70 mixed Franco-Armenian companies, and 30 purely French businesses. But we want to try to go further during this visit," he told Le Figaro newspaper.
Led by companies like Pernod-Ricard, which bought the brandy manufacturer Ararat in 1998, France is one of the main investors in Armenia, with trade last year worth $521 million (561 million euros) - up from $466 million in 1999.
Kocharian was to hold talks with leaders of the French business federation Medef on Wednesday.
Also on the agenda will be the continuing dispute over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian enclave inside Armenia's Turkic-speaking neighbor Azerbaijan.
France is co-president with Russia and the United States of a group set up by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to find a solution to the conflict, which flared into open warfare between 1988 and 1994.
Kocharian held talks in Paris two weeks ago with Chirac and his Azerbaijani counterpart Heydar Aliyev.
"We are advancing with small steps, but in the right direction," he told Le Figaro.
|
