SO-CALLED GENOCIDE CLAIM CARRIES DISRESPECT FOR HISTORY, GUL

News.az
March 16 2010
Azerbaijan

President Abdullah Gul said that recognizing "genocide claims" in
various parliaments around the world was a mistake.

"We resent the politicization of the issue," he said.

He was referring to the recent acts of the US House Committee on
Foreign Affairs and the Swedish parliament labeling the killings of
Anatolian Armenians during World War I as genocide at the cost of
damaging bilateral relations between Ankara and Washington. Ankara
recalled its ambassadors to Sweden and the United States in a show
of protest.

Gul mentioned what he had heard from some US representatives in
Congress in the past.

"There was a similar debate. I had a speech at this committee. I
talked and talked. A female member of Congress approached me and said,
‘Mr. Gul, why do you exhaust yourself? Accept this and go. When you
go back, you can pass a resolution in your Parliament regarding the
Americans’ extinction of the Indians, and that’s it.’ That’s how they
see it," the president said.

Gul added that members of Congress, indeed, do not know about the
past killings in Turkey. He said that he had asked them and had not
received any adequate responses.