US HOUSE SPEAKER: IT IS NOT KNOWN SO FAR IF RESOLUTION OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE WILL BE PUT FOR VOTING

ArmInfo-RBC.
2007-10-18 12:06:00

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that she was reconsidering
her pledge to force a vote on a resolution condemning as genocide
the mass killing of Armenians starting in 1915, as President Bush
intensified his push to derail the legislation.

Whether it will come up or not and what the action will be remains
to be seen," Ms. Pelosi said in light of the decline in support
for the proposal, which, though nonbinding, has angered Turkey and
raised fears that the Turkish government could reduce its strategic
cooperation with the United States, Reuters reports. The supporters
of the resolution have considerably decreased in number after the
House Foreign Relations Committee passed it last week. Turkey that
supports the USA in the war in Iraq warmed that the adoption of the
Resolution may greatly damage the two countries’ relations.

N. Pelosi said she had always supported this symbolic resolution and
will discuss the issue with the backers of the resolution to make
sure what they strive for. Legislators of the two leading political
parties of the USA have been erasing their names from the list of the
resolution supporters for the last few days, which was, undoubtedly,
a result of Turkey’s criticism of the document. The key figures of
the Republican and Democratic parties are coming out against the
resolution now. Turkey calls it insulting and, despite the support
of many western historians, denies Armenia’s stand that about 1.5
million people were subjected to genocide by Ottoman Turkey during the
WW I. USA considerably depends on the Turkish military base Injirlik
since about 70 percent of American military cargoes are transited to
Iraq via it.