CONDOLEEZZA RICE: TURKS ARE NOT THE OTTOMANS

arminfo
2007-10-25 14:07:00

ArmInfo. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged US lawmakers to
drop an Armenian ‘genocide’ resolution, warning of the strategic
fallout on sensitive ties with Turkey, Thomson Financial News reports.

‘This is a very delicate time with Turkey,’ she told the House of
Representatives Foreign Relations Committee, which voted two weeks
ago to label the Ottoman Empire’s World War I massacre of Armenians
as genocide.

‘We have extremely important strategic interests with the Turks,’
Rice said, appealing to the House as a whole not to vote on the
controversial resolution.

‘This was something that was a horrible event in the mass killings
that took place, but at the time of the Ottoman Empire. These are
not the Ottomans,’ she said of the modern-day Turkish state.

Rice on Tuesday held talks with Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan,
and she told the House panel that she had urged both the Armenians
and Turks to work together on bridging their historical differences.

‘But I continue to believe that the passage of the … Armenian
genocide resolution would severely harm our relationships with Turkey,’
the secretary of state said.