TWO U.S. LAWMAKERS CALL FOR NO VOTE ON ARMENIA RESOLUTION
People’s Daily Online, China
Oct 17 2007
Two U.S. lawmakers of the Democratic Party on Tuesday urged House
of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi not to vote on a resolution
branding the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks between 1915 and
1917 a "genocide."
Alcee Hastings, chairman of the House Commission on Security and
Cooperation in Europe, and John Tanner, chairman of the House NATO
Parliamentary Assembly, made the appeal in a letter to Pelosi.
Passing the resolution by the full House of Representatives "would
have serious consequences for the United States’ important relationship
with modern-day Turkey, a strong NATO ally," they said in the letter.
U.S. media reports have reported that a full House of Representatives
vote on the resolution is expected next month.
The Bush administration has urged the Democrats-controlled House
of Representatives not to vote on the resolution, which was already
passed by the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Turkey has condemned the "genocide" bill and recalled its ambassador
to Washington back to Turkey for consultation over the matter, a sign
of exasperated U.S.-Turkey tension over the issue.
Armenians claim that 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 they ears before 1923.