In The News, UK
March 5 2010

Turkey recalls US ambassador after ‘genocide’ vote

Friday, 05, Mar 2010 02:03
By Richard James.

Turkey has recalled it ambassador to Washington after a US
congressional panel voted to describe the killing of 1.5 million
Armenians in the first world war as genocide.

Responding to the announcement from the US, Turkey’s prime minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country had been accused of a crime it
did not commit and would be removing its US ambassador from the
country.

The house committee on foreign affairs narrowly approved the
resolution which called on the US president to "characterise the
systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1.5 million Armenians as
genocide".

The vote came despite a plea by the White House not to pass the
resolution. The resolution will now be sent to the House of
Representatives for official approval.

Concerns have been raised the vote will now seriously undermine
relations between Turkey and the US as well as dialogue between the
former and Armenia.

Rejecting pressure from Barack Obama’s administration over the damage
the vote could have, chairman of the committee, Howard Berman, said in
his opening remarks on Wednesday that while Turkey was a "vital and,
in most respects, a loyal ally of the United States in a volatile
region¦ nothing justifies Turkey’s turning a blind eye to the reality
of the Armenian genocide".

During his campaign for presidency in 2008 Mr Obama pledged to
describe the killings as genocide, but US secretary of state Hillary
Clinton conceded the administration’s opinion had now changed.

Armenia has long campaigned for Turkey to recognise the killings in
1915 of hundreds of thousands of people deported from eastern Anatolia
as genocide, but successive Turkish governments have refused to do so.

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