BUSH URGES PANEL TO REJECT ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MEASURE
By Brian Knowlton

New York Times, NY
cnd-armenia.html?ref=world
Oct 10 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 – President Bush and two top cabinet members
urged lawmakers today 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 tensions with
Turkey over northern Iraq.

"We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people
that began in 1915," Mr. 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 United States 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 M. Gates have
been speaking out against it for months.

Earlier, the Turkish president, Abdullah Gul, wrote to Mr. 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 Mr. 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 were also 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 withdrew from some
defense contracts under negotiation.

When the resolution seemed likely to reach a vote last spring, Ms. Rice
and Mr. Gates joined in a strongly worded letter to Ms. 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," Ms. Rice said.

The bulk of American air cargo and about one-third of the fuel headed
for Iraq passes through Turkey, Mr. 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," Mr. 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," Ms. Rice and Mr. 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 today 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.

In the debate, House lawmakers spoke of facing an "agonizing choice."

Representative Tom Lantos of California, the committee chairman, said
that the essential question was not whether thousands of Armenians had
died under the Ottomans, but whether the deaths – "this enormous blot
on human history," he called it – constituted genocide, a word implying
an intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

Lantos, who was born to a Jewish family in Budapest and is the only
Holocaust survivor in the House, laid out this "sobering choice"
facing lawmakers: whether to express solidarity with Armenians for
their historic losses or to offend Turkey, with "the risk that it
could cause young men and women in the uniform of the United States
armed services to pay an even heavier price."

"This is a vote of conscience," he said. Some Republicans said they
would oppose the measure, though others supported it.

Representative Dan Burton of Indiana said that "stability in the
entire Middle East could be at risk," and he warned against "kicking
the one ally that’s helping us over there, in the face."

But Representative Gary L. Ackerman, Democrat of New York, argued
that a vote for the resolution was not a vote against modern-day
Turkey. "Turkey is no more the Ottoman Empire than Germany is today’s
Third Reich," he said.

Earlier in the day, hundreds of Turks marched to United States 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.

Photo: Turks opposed to the genocide resolution attended a House
Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday