Azerbaijani students have objected to a request to the Georgian parliament to recognize the killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as 'genocide'.
The Association of Azerbaijani Students in Georgia sent a statement to the Georgian parliament on Tuesday, Gruziya Online reported.
History should be studied and evaluated by researchers, not parliaments or government structures, the statement said.
'We refute all accusations of "genocide" in 1915 and, therefore, condemn the unjust decisions of several states and parliaments. We do not understand these decisions against the background of statements by Ankara that it is ready to open its archives for the study of the problem,' the statement said.
The Armenian community of Georgia has asked the president and parliament to consider recognition of the Armenian 'genocide' of 1915.
'Letters asking for a bill to be drawn up were sent to the head of state, the chairmen of parliament and parliamentary factions, and to ethnic Armenian members of the Georgian parliament,' the Azerbaijani students' statement says.
Armenian organizations asked Georgian MPs of Armenian origin to make a speech at the parliamentary session before 24 April, marked by Armenians as Genocide Memorial Day, and to call on the parliament to honour the memory of the innocent victims of 1915-1923, the Georgia Times reported.
The initiators of the appeal are NGOs - the Armenian Community of Georgia, the Armenian Centre of Cooperation in Georgia and the Association of Armenian Students in Georgia.
In mid-March an academic conference on the North Caucasus in Tbilisi asked the Georgian parliament to recognize the genocide of the Circassian people.
'The increased activity by the Armenian community of Georgia should be seen as the start of the Kremlin's deployment of the Armenian element in Georgia in response to the possible recognition of the genocide of the Circassian people committed by tsarist Russia,' Gruziya Online commented.
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