‘ARMENIAN "GENOCIDE" RESOLUTION VOTE WRONG’

Today’s Zaman
March 9 2010
Turkey

A member of the European Parliament has criticized the vote by the
US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee to label the
treatment of Armenians in 1915 "genocide" at the hands of the late
Ottoman Empire, saying politicians in Europe and the US should not
prejudge the outcome of research by historians on what happened in
eastern Anatolia nearly a century ago.

"Both the US and the EU have backed the welcome moves to set up
a joint commission of historians from Turkey and Armenia to try
and establish the truth about the tragic and large-scale wartime
deaths almost a century ago," British Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah
Ludford, the party’s European justice and human rights spokeswoman
and vice-chair of the European Parliament delegation to the United
States, said in a statement released yesterday. Turkey and Armenia
signed protocols in October to normalize their relations and agreed on
the establishment of a board of historians to study events of World
War I, which Armenians claim amount to genocide. "It makes no sense"
Ludford said, "for outsiders in Europe or America to wade in with
hobnail boots and prejudge the outcome of that sensitive exercise."

Saying that the fact that there were deportations, which involved
atrocities and deaths of many Christian Armenians, was not in doubt,
Ludford stated that there is a need to better study the precise
actions, the 1915 war context and the extent of reciprocal killings of
Muslim Turks. Stating that the resolution passed by a narrow margin,
the MP said she hopes that in those circumstances wisdom will prevail,
with congressmen heeding the call of US President Barack Obama and
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton not to bring this to a vote by
the full House.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress