‘US SHOULDN’T BE INVOLVED IN ARMENIAN GENOCIDE’

Jerusalem Post
March 22 2007

US 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, 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 in a congressional hearing. "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.