CONGRESS PRESSES AHEAD WITH MEASURE ON ARMENIA ‘GENOCIDE’

Focus News
March 4 2010
Bulgaria

Washington. The White House said Thursday that it had urged a key
congressional committee not to press ahead with a vote that would
brand as a "genocide" World War I era massacres of Armenians by
Ottoman Turks, AFP reported.

The vote was to go on as scheduled Thursday at a hearing already
underway in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and if approved is
to be sent to the full House.

The spokesman for the White House National Security Council, Mike
Hammer, said in a statement that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
had urged the committee to cancel the vote.

"Secretary Clinton called Chairman (Howard) Berman yesterday and in
that conversation the secretary indicated that further congressional
action could impede progress on normalization of relations," Hammer
said in a statement.

The resolution, which is non-binding, calls on President Barack Obama
to ensure that US foreign policy reflects an understanding of the
"genocide" and to label the mass killings as such in his annual
statement on the issue.