U.S. administration to block Armenian genocide bill
WASHINGTON, March 6 (RIA Novosti)
The U.S. government will "work very hard" to block a controversial
resolution condemning as genocide the mass killings of Armenians by
Turks during World War I, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said
on Friday.
"We are against this decision. Now we believe that the US Congress
will not take any decision on this subject," the BBC quoted Clinton as
saying at a news conference in Guatemala.
She added that the government would "work very hard" to ensure that it
would not reach the full House floor.
The U.S. State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, confirmed on
Friday that the government would seek to block the bill.
"We don’t think any further congressional action is appropriate," he
said at the department meeting. "We continue to believe that the best
way for Turkey and Armenia to address their shared past is through
their ongoing effort to normalize relations."
The Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives
voted on Thursday 23-22 in support of the resolution following almost
six hours of heated debates.
Ankara condemned the bill and recalled its newly appointed ambassador
to the United States, Namik Tan, for consultations.
President Abdullah Gul said Turkey would "not be responsible for the
negative results of this vote."
Turkey, which has always refused to recognize the killings of an
estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the end of the Ottoman period in
1915 as an act of genocide, earlier warned Washington that this move
could jeopardize U.S-Turkish cooperation and set back the talks aimed
at opening the border between Turkey and Armenia, which has been
closed since 1993 on Ankara’s initiative.
A similar vote in the committee was approved by a wider margin in
2007, but the U.S. Bush administration, anxious to retain Turkish
cooperation in Iraq, scuttled a full House vote.
A number of states have recognized the killings in Armenia as the
first genocide of the 20th century, including Russia, France, Italy,
Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Greece, as well as 42 of the 50
U.S. states. The Vatican, the European Parliament and the World
Council of Churches have also denounced the killings as genocide.
Uruguay was the first to do so in 1965.
However, on the eve of the vote, the Obama administration urged the
committee not to approve the resolution, fearing it could alienate
Washington’s NATO ally, whose help the White House considers
invaluable in solving confrontations in the Middle East and
Afghanistan.