‘GENOCIDE’ TENSION LEADS TO DELAY OF ANNUAL ATC MEETING

Today’s Zaman
March 22 2010
Turkey

The American-Turkish Council (ATC) and the Turkish-American Business
Council (TAÄ°K), joint organizers of an annual conference on relations
between the United States and Turkey have announced that the 29th
Annual Conference on US-Turkish Relations,

"This change is required because of the impossibility of holding the
conference as planned," the ATC said in a press release on Friday,
recalling that earlier this month a US House committee approved
a non-binding resolution calling on US President Barack Obama to
recognize the World War I killings of Anatolian Armenians as genocide.

While expressing regret about the postponement, the ATC and TAÄ°K
stressed their confidence in the durability of a strong trade and
investment relationship between Turkey and the US and said they
have agreed to reschedule the annual conference at a later date. The
ATC and TAÄ°K said they believed that this decision will lead to a
stronger and more effective conference.

"The ATC and a number of our corporate members had worked very hard on
Capitol Hill to defeat this resolution in the committee, but with the
advice that no ministers, no military officers and few senior-level
bureaucrats and business leaders from Turkey would attend the April
conference, we had to act. To protect the integrity of the conference
and to minimize the ATC’s financial losses, the executive committee
directed the cancellation of the event," James Holmes, a retired US
ambassador and the president and chief executive officer of the ATC,
said in a separate statement.

Last week, the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association
(TUSÄ°AD) called off a trip to the US scheduled for March 16-17,
arguing that it would be tainted by the current tension between Ankara
and Washington.

Foreign Trade Minister Zafer Caglayan had already announced that he
had postponed a planned trip to the US.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress