People’s Daily Online, China
Oct 14 2007

Turkish-U.S. Business Council cancels conference

Turkish-U.S. Business Council cancelled a scheduled conference on
"Turkey Beyond 2008" to protest against the approval of a resolution
on Armenian allegations by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S.
House of Representatives, an official statement said on Sunday.

Turkey’s Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEIK) said in a statement
that the conference, which was planned to be held in New York on
October 16, was cancelled, adding that Turkish State Minister Kursad
Tuzmen also cancelled his trip to United States on Saturday.

Tuzmen said he deemed appropriate to cancel his trip because recent
developments showed that some circles wanted to discredit Turkey’s
rightful struggle.

On Wednesday, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign
Affairs approved a resolution labeling the killings of Armenians
between 1915 and 1917 a genocide.

The resolution drew immediately Turkish government’s condemnation,
though it would have no binding effect on the U.S. foreign policy.

Armenians say more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a
systematic genocide in the hands of the Ottomans during World War I,
before modern Turkey was born in 1923.

But Turkey insists the Armenians were victims of widespread chaos and
governmental breakdown as the 600-year-old empire collapsed in the
years before 1923.

Although the U.S. leadership has warned against the pass of the
resolution, the U.S. lawmakers gave their nod to the bill.

U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday urged Congress not to pass
the bill, saying that it would do "great harm" to U.S. relations with
Turkey, which in Bush’s word as "a key ally in NATO and in the global
war on terror."

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert
Gates had also denounced the measure, saying "the passage of this
resolution at this time would be very problematic for everything we
are trying to do in the Middle East."

Some 70 percent of U.S. air cargo heading for Iraq goes through
Turkey’s airspace, as does about a third of the fuel used by the U.S.
military in Iraq, according to Gates.

Source: Xinhua