Armenians are marking the centenary of the massacre of up to 1.5
million of their people allegedly by Ottoman forces, with world leaders
holding a minute's silence in the capital, Yerevan.
Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and First Lady Rita Sarkisian were
joined on Friday by the leaders of France and Russia marking the event
that still remains a diplomatic minefield around the world.
"Recognition of the genocide is a triumph of human conscience and
justice over intolerance and hatred," Sarkisian said during a
commemoration at a hilltop memorial in Yerevan.
In a speech at the same ceremony, French President Francois Hollande
urged modern day Turkey to end its refusal to recognise the massacre as
"genocide".
A law adopted by France in 2001 on recognition of the killings as
genocide was "an act of truth", Hollande told an audience that also
included the leaders of Cyprus and Serbia and delegates from some 60
countries.
President Vladimir Putin for his part said Russia was standing
shoulder to shoulder with ex-Soviet Armenia, still a close ally for
Moscow in the region.
Meanwhile, the parliament in Germany, Turkey's biggest trade partner
in the European Union, risked a diplomatic rupture with Ankara and
upsetting its own many ethnic Turkish residents by joining the many
Western scholars and two dozen countries to use the word, "genocide."
Its resolution, approved overwhelmingly, marks a significant change
of stance in a country which has worked hard to come to terms with its
responsibility for the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust.
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