German Chancellor Angela Merkel agrees with her party that the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces should be branded a genocide but will not attend a parliament vote Thursday on the issue, her spokeswoman said, The Local reports.
“She told me this morning that she sided with her parliamentary group,” her spokeswoman Christiane Wirtz told journalists, when asked if Merkel signalled her approval of the Armenian genocide resolution during a party meeting on Wednesday.
However, the German leader will not be able to attend the vote at the Bundestag due to other official engagements on her schedule, her spokeswoman said.
Merkel’s Christian Democrats and junior coalition partner Social Democrats, along with the opposition Greens, prepared the resolution entitled “Remembrance and commemoration of the genocide of Armenians and other Christian minorities in 1915 and 1916”, which also carries the word throughout the text.
