"I would like to remind that France recognized the Armenian Genocide on the state level. This is our law and it's obligatory for everyone," French President Jacques Chirac said at a press conference in Yerevan when commenting to a Le Figaro reporter on the Socialist Party's initiative to adopt a law criminalizing the Armenian Genocide denial. The French leader underscored that France is a legal state and any demonstration of racism and xenophobia is punished in compliance with the Penal Code. "The rest, in my opinion, is politics having nothing in common with the legal side of the issue," he said.