ISRAEL WORRIED BY TURK-ARMENIAN DEBATE
By Mark Lavie
The Associated Press
MLive.com, MI
Oct 12 2007
JERUSALEM (AP) – Israel’s government expressed concern Thursday over
the U.S. congressional debate on the mass killings of ethnic Armenians
in Turkey 90 years ago, but tried to deflect pressure from Turkey to
take its side in the dispute.
During a visit to Israel this week, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali
Babacan pressed Israel to use its influence in Washington to help
kill a congressional effort to label the bloodshed as genocide.
Babacan warned that Turkey’s friendly relations with Israel and the
United States could suffer if the genocide resolution was approved.
President Bush is urging Congress to defeat it, pointing to the
importance of Turkey as an ally in the Middle East.
Armenian groups say hundreds of thousands of Armenians were slain
during 1915-17 in what they argue was a genocide campaign by the
Ottoman Empire. Turkey contends the killings were not genocide,
but the result of widespread chaos and political upheaval as the
600-year-old empire collapsed.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev confirmed on Thursday
that Babacan raised the issue during talks with Israeli Foreign
Minister Tzipi Livni.
"We take the Turkish concerns very seriously. We have an excellent
relationship with Turkey," Regev said.
He declined to discuss Israel’s response or say whether Israel
would ask its allies in Washington to intervene. In recent months
a leading Jewish group, the Anti-Defamation League, changed its
policy and declared the Armenian killings "tantamount to genocide,"
angering Turks.
The debate in Washington puts Israel in an uncomfortable position.
Turkey is one of the Jewish state’s few friends in the Muslim world,
but genocide is an extremely sensitive topic in Israel, which was
built in the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust.
Alon Liel, a former director of Israel’s foreign ministry and an
expert in Israel-Turkey relations, said the U.S. debate could hurt
ties between the two countries.
"We tried all these years not to get into it," he said. But because
of the Anti-Defamation League’s new position, "Turkey will blame the
Jewish organizations, and then this could bounce back to us."
Israel’s government has said previously that massacres were perpetrated
against Armenians and expressed sympathy for their suffering. But it
stopped short of calling it genocide.
Regev said Thursday that "there is no change" in Israel’s policy.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
