Swiss Foreign Minister slams French bill

Micheline Calmy-Rey, Swiss Foreign Minister and President of the Swiss Confederation, said in her keynote speech at the 4th Ambassadors Conference at the Foreign Ministry in Ankara yesterday that there was not any law in Switzerland that acknowledges a certain incident as genocide, like in France. Speaking to Turkish ambassadors, Calmy-Rey defined the incidents of 1915 as a tragedy and stressed that these issues should be clarified by historians. Calmy-Rey said that the Swiss government had clearly expressed its formal position about the issue in 2003, and there had been no change in its stance since then. Calmy-Rey said that historians both in Armenia and Turkey should deal with allegations regarding the incidents of 1915 and make contribution to diplomatic discussions with their findings. Speaking in his part, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that Turkey was ready to face its own history, stressing that historians should be involved, all archives should be make sure to be open and history should be dealt with objectively and fairly.