France is preparing to roll out the red carpet for its first state visit from an Armenian president on Monday, amid continuing tensions between France and Turkey since France’s National Assembly accepted a law recognizing the so-called Armenian genocide.
Armenian President Robert Kocharian who needs moral support from French leaders is expected to demand an investment by French industrialists to secure peace and prosperity in one of the smallest and poorest countries of the former Soviet Union.
However Turkey’s reactions against France continues due to the so-called genocide allegations against Armenians during World War One and has decided to bar French firms from billion-dollar arms, building and telecom contracts.
French diplomats played down links between Turkey’s fury and Kocharian’s arrival for the first state visit since Armenia’s 3.7 million people gained independence in 1991.
“There’s nothing in this of the kind that should jeopardize Franco-Turkish relations,” one French Foreign Ministry official said before Monday’s talks with President Jacques Chirac, followed by a state dinner and meetings with Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and other leaders on Tuesday.
French business is also keeping its head down after the parliamentary bill voted at the end of last month to endorse the so-called genocide.
“We’re not going to add to the waves that have already been created,” said one business representative.
The French Business Federation (MEDEF) meets Kocharian on Wednesday, but said it was standard practice to play host to foreign leaders here on state visits.
The cost of the so-called genocide law two weeks ago, MEDEF and its Turkish counterpart TUSIAD issued a statement regretting “the climate of tension.”
“This decision, which hurt the Turkish people’s friendship towards France, has been implemented despite the warnings of the French and Turkish business communities,” they said.
That has not stopped Ankara from making declarations almost daily that Turkey is cancelling deals with French companies or barring them from multi-billion dollar bids for road-building, tank supplies or telecommunications contracts.
Turkish Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu said last Friday that Ankara was considering barring French firms from defense bids worth a total of $11 billion.
French state-owned firm GIAT, the maker of Leclerc tanks, is one of the five bidders for a tender worth some $7.1 billion.
Turkey has also said it is banning two more companies from defense bids for a year — Alcatel Space Industries and Matra Marconi Space, now part of a venture owned by the EADS aerospace group and BAE Systems.
Also in the firing line is a $259 million satellite contract with Alcatel and a road building deal with the French construction group Bouygues.
As well as promoting business ties, Kocharian hopes to build on Chirac’s commitment to help Armenia pursue peace talks with neighboring Azerbaijan over a 13-year conflict in the Azeri enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, where occupied by Armenia with help of the ethnic Armenian majority and led to 35,000 deaths before a cease fire which has held since 1994.
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