Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates
Feb 4 2006

Turkish foreign minister flies to US to meet Rice

4 February 2007

ANKARA, Turkey – Turkey’s foreign minister flew to the United States
on Sunday for a meeting with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Abdullah Gul’s trip is aimed at establishing common ground between
the two NATO allies on subjects including the Iraq war and the fight
against Kurdish rebels.

During his meeting with Rice on Tuesday, Gul was also expected to ask
the US administration to block a resolution, introduced in January by
Democratic and Republican lawmakers, to urge the US government to
recognize as genocide the mass killings of Armenians at the end of
World War I.

Turkey has adamantly denied claims by scholars that its predecessor
state, the Ottoman government, caused the Armenian deaths in a
genocide. The Turkish government has said the toll, allegedly as high
as 1.5 million, is wildly inflated, and Armenians were killed or
displaced in civil unrest during the disarray surrounding the
empire’s collapse.

Gul said he would also meet with new UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
in New York on Friday.(AP)