The Advertiser (Australia)
October 12, 2007 Friday
State Edition

Bid to appease Turks on ‘genocide’

DESMOND BUTLER, WASHINGTON

THE Bush Administration will look to soothe Turkish anger after a
congressional panel’s approval of a measure describing the deaths of
hundreds of thousands of Armenians early in the last century as
”genocide” .

After the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives
yesterday defied warnings by President George W. Bush and sent the
measure to the full House for a vote, the administration now will try
to pressure Democratic leaders not to schedule a vote, which would be
expected to pass.

Mr Bush and senior officials made last-minute appeals to law-makers
to reject the measure.

”Its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in
NATO and in the global war on terror,” Mr Bush said.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack later said passage of the
resolution would gravely harm U.S.-Turkish relations and American
interests in Europe and the Middle East.

”The United States recognises the immense suffering of the Armenian
people due to mass killings and forced deportations at the end of the
Ottoman Empire,” Mr McCormack said.

The Turkish government said: ”It is not possible to accept such an
accusation of a crime which was never committed by the Turkish
nation.

”It is blatantly obvious that the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
does not have a task or function to re-write history by distorting a
matter which specifically concerns the common history of Turks and
Armenians.”