Financial Tiems

Turkey condemns US ‘genocide’ vote

By Daniel Dombey in Washington and Reuters

Published: October 11 2007 04:46 | Last updated: October 11 2007 04:46

Turkey warned on Thursday that relations with its Nato ally the US
would be harmed by a US House committee’s approval of a resolution
calling the 1915 massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks "genocide".

The move came as Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan prepared to ask
parliament, which his party controls, to authorise a military
incursion into northern Iraq to fight Kurdish Turkish rebels using the
region as a base.

"The committee’s approval of this resolution was an irresponsible
move, which at a greatly sensitive time will make relations with a
friend and ally, and a strategic partnership nurtured over
generations, more difficult," the centre-right government said in a
statement.

"Our government regrets and condemns this decision. It is unacceptable
that the Turkish nation has been accused of something that never
happened in history," the government said.

US legislators on Wednesday defied the Bush administration when they
voted to describe the mass killings of Armenians more than eight
decades ago as genocide.

The 27-21 decision by the House of Representatives foreign affairs
committee, which paves the way for a vote in the full House in coming
weeks, came in spite of a warning from George W. Bush, president, and
his top officials that co-operation with Turkey and the fate of US
troops in Iraq could be at stake.

It also comes as the US seeks to convince Turkey not to carry out the
incursion into northern Iraq .

Proponents of the measure, which has vigorous support from the
Armenian-American population, argue that its call for Mr Bush to
"accurately characterise the systematic and deliberate annihilation of
1.5m Armenians as genocide" is essential to putting the historical
record straight.

"The sad truth is that the modern government of Turkey refuses to come
to terms with this genocide," said Representative Christopher Smith of
New Jersey, at an emotionally charged session attended by four
survivors of the mass killings that began in 1915.

"Let us do this and be done with it," said Representative Brad Sherman
of California. "We will get a few angry words out of Ankara for a few
days, and then it’s over."

But only hours before the committee voted Mr Bush warned that passage
of the resolution "would do great harm to our relations with a key
ally in Nato and in the global war on terror".

According to US commanders in Iraq, including Gen David Petraeus,
Robert Gates, defence secretary, said: "Access to airfields and to the
roads and so on in Turkey would be very much put at risk if this
resolution passes and the Turks react as strongly as we believe they
will." He added that about 70 per cent of US air cargo going into Iraq
went through Turkey.

US officials say passage of the resolution by the full House will make
Washington’s bid to convince Turkey not to launch a military incursion
into Iraq much harder. Public outrage against the Kurdish separatist
PKK has flared in the wake of an attack in which 13 soldiers were
killed on Sunday.

Washington’s push for Turkey take a more collaborative approach on
combating PKK has also been complicated by the resignation of Joseph
Ralston, the retired US general who had been seeking to increase
Washington-Ankara co-operation against the militant group.

"For his own reasons he decided that he was going to be moving on,"
said Sean McCormack, state department spokesman, this week. "Any
continuing presence of the PKK or the continuing activities of the PKK
is not because what he did or did not do." He added that he was not
yet aware of a possible replacement for Gen Ralston.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

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