Legislating history

I guess someone didn't talk to the diplomats first. Maybe they should've talked to the Pope first. Sometimes dead empires aren't so dead after all.

PARIS (AFP) - France has sought to calm an uproar in Turkey and in the European Union after the French parliament approved a bill that would make it a crime to deny that the 1915-17 massacres of Armenians by the Ottoman Turks constituted genocide.

The French foreign ministry insisted that Paris was still "very keen" on dialogue with Turkey and wanted its "strong ties" with that country to continue.

But a furious Ankara -- which strongly contests the use of the term genocide -- was in no mood to listen, saying that France had dealt "a heavy blow" to longstanding bilateral relations.

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