DEMS TO PRESS AHEAD WITH GENOCIDE BILL

Gulf Times, Qatar
Oct 16 2007

WASHINGTON: Top US Democrats on Sunday vowed to press ahead with a
bill condemning the mass killing of Armenians decades ago as genocide,
brushing off Turkish fury over the sensitive issue.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said possible
reprisals affecting Turkey’s co-operation with the US military were
"hypothetical" and would not derail the resolution.

Holding a vote on condemning the massacre, even many years after the
fact, is "about who we are as a country," Pelosi told ABC television.

"Genocide still exists, and we saw it in Rwanda; we see it now in
Darfur," she said on ABC television after the House foreign affairs
committee last week branded the Ottoman Empire’s World War I massacre
of Armenians a genocide.

But the White House warned on Sunday that the bill could bring "grave
harm" to the already strained relations between Washington and Ankara.

"We regret that the Speaker Pelosi is intent on bringing this
resolution for a vote despite the strong concerns expressed by foreign
policy and defence experts … and our Turkish allies," said White
House spokesman Tony Fratto.

"We continue to strongly oppose this resolution which may do grave
harm to US-Turkish relations and to US interests in Europe and the
Middle East."

The non-binding resolution, he said, "will not improve Turkish-Armenian
relations or advance reconciliation among Turks and Armenians over
the terrible events of 1915."

Armenians say at least 1.5mn of their people were killed from 1915
to 1917 under what they describe as an campaign of deportation and
murder by the Ottoman Empire. Turkey bitterly disputes the number of
dead and the characterisation of the killings as a genocide.

The bill is likely to come up in the full House of Representatives in
November. Although the resolution is only symbolic, Turkey recalled
its ambassador to Washington last week and has called off visits to
the US by at least two of its officials.

The angry reaction has fueled fears within the US administration
that it could lose access to a military base in Turkey, a Nato ally,
which provides a crucial staging ground for US supplies headed to
Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two top US officials, one each from the state and defence departments,
are now in Turkey to try to cool the diplomatic row.

"We are certainly working to try to minimise any concrete steps
the government might take (such as) restricting the movement of
our troops," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday
in Moscow.

Rice and Defence Secretary Robert Gates lobbied hard against the
genocide resolution, and the administration says it will keep up its
effort to forestall a vote in the full House.

US-Turkish military ties "will never be the same again" if the House
confirms the committee vote, Turkey’s military chief General Yasar
Buyukanit told the daily Milliyet on Sunday.

House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer said he had repeatedly raised
the killings of Armenians with Turkish political and military leaders
during his 26 years in Congress.