RICE DODGES QUESTIONS ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
March 21 2007

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday that the
United States should not be involved in a dispute between Turkey and
Armenia over whether the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians almost
a century ago constituted genocide.

Under intense questioning from Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the sponsor
of a resolution that would declare that Turkey’s Ottoman predecessor
state committed genocide, Rice repeatedly avoided answering whether
she believed there was any basis for historical debate on the matter.

"What we’ve encouraged the Turks and the Armenians to do is to have
joint historical commissions that can look at this, to have efforts
to examine their past, and in examining their past to get over it,"
she said. "I don’t think it helps that process of reconciliation for
the United States to enter this debate at that level."

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 they died in an organized genocide;
the Turks say they were victims of widespread chaos and governmental
breakdown as the 600-year-old empire collapsed in the years before
Turkey was born in 1923.