BUSH URGES CONGRESS TO REJECT ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION
By Brian Knowlton
International Herald Tribune
ope/10turkey.php
Oct 10 2007
France
WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush and two top cabinet members urged
lawmakers on Wednesday to reject a resolution describing the deaths
of hundreds of thousands of Armenians early in the last century as
genocide – a highly sensitive issue at a time of rising U.S.-Turkish
tensions over northern Iraq.
"We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people
that began in 1915," Bush said in a brief statement from the White
House. "But this resolution is not the right response to these historic
mass killings, and its passage would do great harm to relations with
a key ally in NATO, and to the war on terror."
He spoke hours before the House Foreign Affairs Committee was to vote
on the resolution. The House speaker, Representative Nancy Pelosi,
is said to be prepared to forward the matter to the full House,
where more than half the 435 members are co-sponsors.
Passage would be symbolic – but the symbolism, the administration
asserts, could seriously jeopardize the delicate relationship with
Turkey.
Turkey has been a vital way-station for fuel and materiel shipments to
U.S. forces in Iraq, and the administration has spared little effort
to lobby against the resolution. The State Department secured the
signatures of the eight living former secretaries of state on a letter
opposing the resolution. And both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have been speaking out against it
for months.
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Earlier, the Turkish president, Abdullah Gul, wrote to Bush to thank
him for his efforts opposing the resolution and to draw "attention to
the problems it would create in bilateral relations if it is accepted,"
according to a statement from Gul’s office.
Adding to the tensions are the recent Turkish preparations for
a possible invasion of northern Iraq in an effort to stop lethal
incursions by armed Kurdish militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party,
or PKK.
The United States strongly opposes such Turkish action, fearing
troubles in what has been the most stable part of Iraq. But the Turkish
government is under heavy public pressure to act, and officials in
Ankara have warned that passage of the genocide resolution would make
it harder for the government to resist such pressure.
Turkey has acknowledged Armenian deaths over a period of several
years beginning in 1915, as the Ottoman Republic was falling apart,
but it vehemently rejects any effort to classify them as genocide. It
says that many Turks also were killed at the time.
Turkey has shown its willingness to react sharply to criticism on
the Armenian issue. When the French legislature called for criminal
charges against those who deny that a genocide occurred, the Turkish
military cut contacts with the French military and canceled some
defense contracts under negotiation.
When the resolution seemed likely to reach a vote last spring, Rice
and Gates joined in a strongly worded letter to Pelosi warning against
passage. They repeated their arguments Wednesday.
"The passage of this resolution at this time would be very problematic
for everything we are trying to do in the Middle East," Rice said.
The bulk of U.S. air cargo and about one-third of the fuel headed
for Iraq passes through Turkey, Gates said, including nearly all the
newly purchased mine-resistant vehicles.
"Access to air fields and to the roads and so on in Turkey would very
much be put at risk if this resolution passes and Turkey reacts as
strongly as we believe they will," Gates said.
The debate has left the administration in a difficult position,
and officials have gone out of their way to emphasize that they are
not defending what happened. "The president recognizes annually the
horrendous suffering that ethnic Armenians endured during the final
years of the Ottoman Empire," Rice and Gates wrote in their March
7 letter.
Armenian-American groups have been rallying support for the
resolution. The Armenian National Committee of America e-mailed members
Wednesday to urge them to watch the Foreign Affairs Committee session
on-line and phone the offices of any "traditionally friendly member
of the committee" who is not in attendance.
On Wednesday, hundreds of Turks marched to U.S. missions in Turkey
to protest the bill, The Associated Press reported. And in Ankara,
leftist protesters chanted anti-American slogans in front of the
embassy, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.