U.S. HOUSE PANEL TO VOTE ON ARMENIA GENOCIDE RESOLUTION
By Desmond Butler, The Associated Press
Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Oct 3 2007
A measure to declare that the World War I-era killings of Armenians
was genocide is expected to advance in the U.S. Congress next week,
despite opposition from the Bush administration and Turkey’s warning
that its relations with Washington could be badly damaged.
Similar measures have been debated in Congress for decades, but have
repeatedly been thwarted amid concerns about damaging relations with
Turkey, an important NATO ally. Tuesday’s announcement by the House
of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee that it would consider
the resolution next Wednesday signals that the Democratic leaders,
who control the House, support the measure. With that support, the bill
stands a good chance of passing in a vote by the full House this time.
If the resolution is approved by the committee, it would be up to
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to decide whether to bring it to the House
floor for a vote. While Pelosi has previously expressed support for
recognizing the killings as genocide, it is not clear whether she
would bring the resolution to a vote.
But according to two congressional aides, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, the committee would
not have taken up the resolution without Pelosi’s support. The measure
is expected to pass in the committee and has widespread support in
the full House, should Pelosi allow a vote.
Though the largely symbolic measure would have no binding effect on
U.S. foreign policy, it could nonetheless damage an already strained
relationship with Turkey.
The dispute involves the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians
during the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. Armenian advocates,
backed by many historians, contend the Armenians died in an organized
genocide. The Turks say the Armenians were victims of widespread chaos
and governmental breakdown as the 600-year-old empire collapsed in
the years before Turkey was born in 1923.
The bill’s sponsor, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, says passage is
overdue and urgent, with time running out for the remaining survivors
of the killings. "The United States has a compelling historical and
moral reason to recognize the Armenian Genocide, which cost a million
and a half people their lives," Schiff said in a statement. "But we
also have a powerful contemporary reason as well: how can we take
effective action against the genocide in Darfur if we lack the will
to condemn genocide whenever and wherever it occurs?"
Turkey argues that the U.S. House of Representatives is the wrong
institution to arbitrate a sensitive historical dispute. It has
proposed that an international commission of experts examine Armenian
and Turkish archives.
In the meantime, Turkey has been lobbying intensively in Congress
with support from the Bush administration to quash the resolution.
"The administration is very much against this resolution and has
been very active in trying to stop it," said Turkey’s ambassador to
Washington, Nabi Sensoy. "We are very grateful for their help."
But Sensoy said that Turkey’s government may have to respond should
the resolution pass. "We are not in the business of threatening,
but nobody is going to win if this is passed," he said.
The measure comes at a time when public opinion polls show that
the United States has become widely unpopular in Turkey because of
opposition to U.S. policy in Iraq. A recent poll by the Pew Research
Center found the United States had only a 9 percent favorable rating
in Turkey.
After France voted last year to make denial of Armenian genocide
a crime, the Turkish government ended military ties. A similar move
with the United States could have drastic repercussions on operations
in Iraq and Afghanistan, which rely heavily on Turkish support.