France never to adopt poisonous Armenian "genocide" bill- official

In 2006 the French National Assembly adopted the bill criminalizing the denial of the 1915 incidents as "genocide".

The bill was blocked by the Senate, but the vote in the lower house of the parliament dealt a blow to bilateral relations between Turkey and France. Â

"The issue is over. It is impossible for the Senate to adopt this law," said Hubert Haenel, president of the Senate's Commission for European Union Affairs.

Heanel, in Turkey to attend seminar titled, "The Republic in France and Turkey" at Bilgi University in Istanbul, told TDN that the bill was blocked in the Senate, adding French intellectual circles had also criticized the bill, as it prejudged the studies of historians.

He said the atmosphere between the two countries had changed, implying also that there was a different conjecture that would also make it difficult for the Senate to make a decision that would damage bilateral relations.

Armenia, with the backing of the diaspora, claims up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in orchestrated killings in 1915. Turkey rejects the claims, saying that 300,000 Armenians along with at least as many Turks died in civil strife that emerged when Armenians took up arms, backed by Russia, for independence in eastern Anatolia.

In 2005, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan took a first step towards resolving the issue by proposing a joint commission of historians launch an investigation and publish their conclusions, but the proposal was rejected by Yerevan.