Parliament speaker Cicek in Indonesia

Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek yesterday met with Hidayat Nur Wahid, Chairman of the inter-parliamentary committee of the Indonesian House of Representatives, and House of Representatives' Speaker Marzuki Alie in Palembang, Indonesia. Following his contacts, Cicek attended the 7th conference of Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (PAOIC), during which the French bill criminalizing the denial of Armenian allegations pertaining to the incidents of 1915 was brought to agenda. Accordingly, lawmakers from member countries of the PAOIC have agreed to reject the French bill in a final declaration of their conference. Thus the PAOIC has decided to include a paragraph in the final declaration of their conference that shuns the French denial bill as "virtually non-existent" after a proposal by Turkish delegates to the conference and the backing of other members of the OIC Parliamentary Union. Emrullah Isler, head of the Turkish delegation at the PAOIC, said, "This is going to be the first joint response from an international meeting to the French bill which was adopted by the French Senate." Stating that Turkey has not been able to express itself to the Arab world on the issue, Isler said, "The Arab world has merely heard about Armenian theses until now. We should translate our documents on the issue into Arab language. We have been making efforts towards this end." Speaking in his part, PAOIC Secretary General Mahmut Erol Kilic said that Turkey has been unable to inform eastern societies on Turkey's rightful case with regard to Armenian allegations. Stating that the same applies to the Cyprus issue, Kilic said, "The Greek Cypriot side came to Indonesia and carried out lobby activities, saying that they hope an offending decision to them would not be made in the meeting."