BUSH BACKS TURKEY, OPPOSES RESOLUTION ON MASSACRES OF ARMENIANS
By Edward DeMarco and Roger Runningen

Bloomberg
Oct 5 2007

Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) — President George W. Bush expressed his opposition
today to a congressional resolution on the World War I-era massacres
of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey, during a conversation with Turkish
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

A U.S. House resolution would ask the president to declare the killings
of as many as 1.5 million Armenians nine decades ago a genocide.

In today’s phone call, "Bush reiterated his opposition to this
resolution, the passage of which would be harmful to U.S. relations
with Turkey," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe
said in an e-mailed statement.

Turkey denies that a systematic slaughter of Armenians took place,
saying Armenians and Turks alike were killed in ethnic clashes between
1915 and 1923 after Armenian groups sided with Russia in World War I.

The Turkish Embassy in Washington bought a full-page advertisement
in today’s Washington Post asking members of Congress to support a
broad historical inquiry into the dispute rather than a "one-sided
interpretation of the tragedies" in the last years of Ottoman rule.

Bush "believes that the determination of whether or not the events
constitute a genocide should be a matter for historical inquiry,
not legislation," Johndroe said.

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