CLINTON SAYS GENOCIDE RESOLUTION WAS INAPPROPRIATE

armradio.am
05.03.2010 18:25

The Obama administration believes the passage of the Armenian Genocide
resolution on Thursday was inappropriate, U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton said.

"We have made that clear to all parties involved," she said, while
responding to a question about the resolution in the U.S. House of
Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs.

A journalist asked: "Before entering the administration, both you
and President Obama supported the campaign to label 1915 incidents as
‘genocide.’ In recent days, both you and he have made direct appeals to
Howard Berman, the chairman of the House’s Foreign Affairs Committee,
against the draft resolution. Could you explain why you and the
president have reversed course on this issue?"

Clinton responded: "Well, I think circumstances have changed in very
significant ways. When President Obama took office and I became
secretary of state, we determined that the process undertaken by
Switzerland in bringing the Turkish and Armenian governments together
was a very worthy one that we intended to support, and we have done
so. I was personally in Zurich at the time when the protocols for
the normalization of the relationship between the two countries were
signed. We think that is the appropriate way to manage the problems
that have stood in the way of normalization between the two countries.

"I do not think it is for any other country to determine how two
countries resolve matters between them, to the extent that actions that
the United States might take could disrupt this process," she said.

Clinton said, "Therefore, President Obama and I have made clear,
both last year and again this year, that we do not believe any action
by the Congress is appropriate, and we oppose it. We do not believe
that the full Congress will or should act upon that resolution, and
we have made that clear to all the parties involved," the Hurriyet
Daily News reports.