British Justice Minister Jack Straw reassured Turkey that the bill on Armenian allegations would not be adopted at the House of Commons.

Addressing the working lunch of the Turkey-England Business forum Tuesday attended by Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and other senior Turkish officials, Straw said the chances that the bill would be adopted was zero.

He said only one of the 651 members of the House of Commons backed the bill, noting that the neither the government nor the opposition supported the bill.

Straw who reiterated England's support to Turkey's EU bid said the EU needed Turkey as mush as Turkey needed EU.

A similar bill recognising the tragic events of 1915 --which took place shortly before the fall of the Ottoman Empire-- as genocide was recently adopted by the U.S House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Swedish Parliament, straining relations between Turkey and these countries.

Turkey which strongly rejects the genocide allegations and regards the events as civil strife in wartime which claimed lives of many Turks and Armenians, severely criticized the resolutions warning that it would jeopardise the historic rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia.


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