ARMENIAN PATRIARCH CONDEMNS ANTI-TURKISH RESOLUTION

NTV MSNBC
Oct 15 2007
Turkey

Ankara has warned that the resolution will harm Turkish-US relations
and has vowed to lobby against its being ratified by Congress.

DEMRE – The head of the Armenian church in Turkey said he opposed the
passing of a resolution by the US House of Representatives Committee
on Foreign Affairs acknowledging claims the Ottoman Empire committed
an act of genocide against its Armenian citizens in World War One.

Patriarch Mesrob Mutafyan said the resolution had become a tool of
US domestic policy and that he and other Turkish Armenians would do
everything in their power to prevent the resolution being passed into
law by a vote of the US Congress.

Last Tuesday, the Committee on Foreign Affairs voted 27 to 21 in favour
of the resolution, which is opposed by the Bush administration. Senior
US officials, including President George W Bush and Secretary of State
Condalezza Rice, have spoke out against the resolution and promised
Ankara they will work to prevent it from passing into law.

Speaking in the southern Turkish town of Demre Sunday, where he was
visiting the Church of Saint Nicolas, Patriarch Mesrob said that
criticisms over the resolution should not extend to Turkey’s own
Armenian community.

The proposal by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Erdogan to set up
a joint commission of historians with Armenia to study the issue was an
important offer, and one that should be acted on, the Patriarch said.