GENOCIDE BILL ‘THREAT TO US SECURITY’

Press TV
Oct 15 2007
Iran

General Yasar Buyukanit

The Turkish military chief has warned that passing the resolution on
Armenian genocide through congress will undermine US national security.

"By passing this resolution Washington has indeed threatened the US
national security and damaged the bilateral relations of the two
countries," General Yasar Buyukanit, the Turkish military chief,
told the Milliyet newspaper.

Last Wednesday, the House foreign affairs committee passed a nonbinding
resolution on a 27 to 21 bipartisan vote, declaring the killings, which
began in 1915 in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, to be genocide.

Turkey fiercely opposes the international efforts to recognize the
1915 masacre as genocide.

The Armenians claim that during 1915 to 1917 the government of the
Young Turks deliberately slaughtered over 1.5 million Armenians, while
Turkey, the heir to the Ottoman Empire, rejects the accusations and
insists that during the critical conditions of World War I some of
the Turks and Armenians died due to different causes, such as disease
and famine.