Hürriyet, Turkey
Feb 7 2009

US House to receive ‘Genocide’ bill again

WASHINGTON – Pro-Armenian lawmakers in the U.S. House of
Representatives, the lower chamber of Congress, are preparing to
introduce later this month a fresh resolution calling on the United
States to formally recognize the 1915incidents in the Ottoman Empire
as "genocide," sources said.

The bill will be introduced by four senior members of the Armenian
Caucus in the House of Representatives, Adam Schiff, a democrat from
California, Frank Pallone, a democrat from New Jersey, George
Radanovich, a republican from California, and Mark Kirk, a republican
from Illinois, the sources said. The pro-Armenian lobby is presently
working to garner the support of a large number of lawmakers as
cosponsors for the resolution.

Parliamentary deputies, Suat Kiniklioglu and Cuneyt Yuksel, from the
ruling Justice and Development Party, currently on a visit to
Washington, confirmed that the U.S.-Armenians were working hard on two
fronts to win U.S. "genocide recognition" this year. "With the Barack
Obama and Joe Biden administration and a new Congress now in place, we
have the best opportunity in years to end Turkey’s gag rule on the
United States’s recognition of the Armenian genocide," The Armenian
National Committee of America, the largest U.S.-Armenian group, said
recently.

Two-pronged effort

On one hand the Armenians are urging President Obama to keep his
promise last year to recognize the "genocide" if elected. And on the
other, they are seeking congressional recognition. When asked if he
thought President Obama would qualify the Armenian killings as
"genocide," Kiniklioglu said he did not know.

With Obama as president and many other pro-Armenian officials in top
positions in the new administration and Congress, Armenians hope that
this time they will win formal U.S. "genocide recognition." Analysts
also agreed that this is highly probable. But the Armenians fear that
this may not be the case, given the fact that some earlier presidents,
including Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush, have promised "genocide
recognition," and then changed their decisions when in power.

Located in the middle of the volatile Middle East, the Caucasus and
the Balkans, Turkey warns that formal U.S. recognition of the killings
as genocide would hurt bilateral relations in a major and lasting way.