BUSH AND CONGRESS DISPUTE ARMENIAN ‘GENOCIDE’ STATUS
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
The Independent, UK
Oct 11 2007
A Congressional committee last night defied George Bush, voting through
a resolution describing the 1915 slaughter of Armenians as a genocide
– a move the White House says would severely damage relations with
Turkey, a vital ally in the Iraq war.
"This resolution is not the right response to these historic mass
killings," the President told reporters, hours before the House
Foreign Affairs Committee met to consider the measure. Instead,
the majority-Democrat panel passed it by 27 votes to 21. Barring an
abrupt about-face by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has long backed the
resolution, it will now come to a vote by the full House. There, 226
members, more than a majority, have already signed up as co-sponsors.
In one sense, the showdown is a re-run of an argument that has
periodically endangered ties between Washington and Ankara. But as
joint letters to Ms Pelosi from all eight living former secretaries
of state and three former defense secretaries testify, rarely have
the diplomatic stakes been higher, and never have the prospects of
passage been greater.
The confrontation between the White House and Congress comes at the
worst possible moment, just as the government of Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan is close to authorising a major incursion into northern Iraq
to strike Kurdish rebels, after 15 Turkish soldiers were killed in
fighting in recent days.
Last week, Mr Erdogan telephoned Mr Bush to complain about the Armenian
resolution, and warn that, if it passed, Turkey would take retaliatory
action. Reprisals could bring a slowdown or even halt to supplies to
US forces in Iraq that currently transit through Incirlik airbase
in eastern Turkey, and possibly see the withdrawal of thousands of
Turkish workers and support staff in Iraq.
"This is a choice between condemning genocide and endangering our
soldiers in Iraq," was how Tom Lantos, Democratic chairman of the
House committee and himself a Jewish Holocaust survivor, summed
up the dilemma. For its part, the White House is pleading with Mr
Erdogan not to send troops into mainly Kurdish northern Iraq, and
risk destabilising the country’s most peaceful region.
Passage of the resolution would inflict "great harm to our relations
with a key ally in Nato and in the global war on terror," Mr Bush
stressed yesterday. In their letter, the former secretaries of state
warned that, although the resolution is non-binding, its passage would
" endanger our national security interests".
Ankara has spared no effort either. A high-level delegation from its
parliament has been on Capitol Hill this week, warning that military
co-operation would be jeopardised. The Turkish embassy is paying more
than $300,000 (£150,000) a month to top lobbying firms to achieve
that end.
The crucial language in the resolution – officially titled the
Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide –
calls on Mr Bush, in his traditional annual presidential message
delivered every 24 April on the events of 90 years ago, to "accurately
characterise the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1.5 million
Armenians as genocide."
The Turks flatly reject such a description, claiming instead that,
although hundreds of thousands of Armenians may have perished, the
deaths resulted from forced movements of population and fighting as
the Ottoman Empire collapsed during the First World War. Vast numbers
of Turks also died, they say.
Genocide, says Nabi Sensoy, the ambassador to the US, "is the greatest
accusation of all against humanity. You cannot expect any nation to
accept that label."
No one is in a trickier position than Ms Pelosi. Her San Francisco
district has a large Armenian population, and she has long called
for passage of a resolution specifically condemning genocide. Now
she faces a choice between defying the White House, and backing down.
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