SUPPORT FADING FOR ARMENIAN RESOLUTION
RTT News, NY
Oct 17 2007
10/17/2007 7:44:44 AM A number of House Democrats have withdrawn
their support for a resolution that would characterize the killings
of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks during World
War I as a genocide, due to concerns that the measure could strain
U.S.-Turkish relations.
Last week, the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved the
controversial measure 27-21 amid lobbying by the Turkish government
and even President Bush, who said the resolution could compromise
American interests in the Middle East.
"Turkey obviously feels they are getting poked in the eye over
something that happened a century ago and maybe this isn’t a good
time to be doing that," said Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla.
Although the Turks acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of Armenians
died, they contend that the deaths were not a systemic massacre but
resulted from the war that ended with the creation of Turkey in 1923.
Opponents fear specifically that this resolution could compromise
the U.S. military’s access to Incirlik air base near the southern
city of Adana, where goods pass through on their way to Iraq.
"We simply cannot allow the grievances of the past, as real as they
may be, to in any way derail our efforts to prevent further atrocities
for future history books," said Rep. Wally Herger, R- Calif.
Rep. Jack Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat and chairman of the House
Defense Appropriations Committee, said the resolution "could harm
our relations with Turkey and therefore our strategic interests in
the region."
Still, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has promised that the
resolution will move forward, resisting calls from the White House
to jettison the measure.
Similar resolutions were approved by the House in 1975 and 1984 but
foundered in the Senate. In 2000, a similar resolution was headed
to the House floor when the vote was abruptly called off by then
House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, a Republican, at the urging of
then-President Bill Clinton.
"This issue has been around the Congress long before I got here
and I got here 17 year ago," House Minority Leader John Boehner,
R-Ohio, said.
"There has been a lot of discussion about this issue, there has been
a lot of lobbying about this issue, and there is no question that
the Armenian people suffered tragically during that period, but this
is something that historians ought to sort out and not members of
Congress," he said.
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Al Gore Rules Out Second Run At US Presidency
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10/17/2007 6:23:35 AM Former US Vice President Al Gore said winning
the Nobel Peace Prize had not enthused him for a second run at the
2008 presidential race.
Gore told Norwegian state broadcaster NRK in an interview broadcast
Wednesday that sharing the award with the UN climate panel was a
‘great honor’ but said he didn’t any have plans to be a candidate
again, so he doesn’t really see it in that context at all.
At a press conference last Friday in Palo Alto, California, Gore
skirted the issue of a US presidential run, saying then that he wanted
to "get back to business" on "a planetary emergency."
Opinion polls indicated that winning the prize has not altered
Gore’s standing in the United States. The Gallup Poll revealed 48%
of people said they wanted Gore to run for the presidency in 2008,
with 43% against.