Azerbaijan denounces France vote on Armenia 'genocide'

BAKU - Agence France-Presse

İHA photo

Turkey's ally Azerbaijan today denounced as anti-democratic the French Senate's approval of a law making it illegal to deny that the mass killings of Armenians during World War I were genocide.
 
"The Republic of Azerbaijan deplores the law adopted by the French Senate to criminalize the denial of the 'Armenian genocide' and expresses strong protest over this," the foreign ministry in Baku said in a statement.
 
The move was "against the principles of democracy, human rights, freedom of speech and expression", the statement said.

Turkic-speaking, mainly Muslim Azerbaijan is a bitter enemy of Armenia as well as a close ally of Turkey, and like Ankara, Baku rejects the genocide allegations as false.

Ex-Soviet neighbours Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a war in the 1990s over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, where frontline skirmishes still continue and no final peace deal has been signed.