PANEL APPROVES BILL ON ARMENIANS
By Desmond Butler
The Associated Press
Oct 11 2007 – 5 Hours Ago
WASHINGTON (AP) – The Bush administration, chafing over a House
committee vote to label as genocide the deaths of Armenians a century
ago, said Thursday lawmakers could better spend their time passing
legislation attending to today’s problems at home.
White House deputy press secretary Scott Stanzel reiterated the
administration’s disappointment with the vote by the House Foreign
Affairs Committee and said it would be problematic for American
efforts in the Middle East.
"While the House is debating the Ottoman Empire, they are not moving
forward with appropriations bills," said Stanzel. "The House has
not appointed conferees, they aren’t coming to the table to discuss
children’s health care, and they haven’t permanently closed the
intelligence gap that will open up when the Protect America Act
expires."
Meanwhile, the administration is trying to soothe Turkish anger over
the vote. The foreign affairs panel defied warnings by President Bush
with its 27-21 vote Wednesday to send the Armenian measure to the
full House for a vote. The administration will now try to pressure
Democratic leaders not to schedule a vote, though it is expected
to pass.
Hours before the vote, Bush and his top two Cabinet members and other
senior officials made last-minute appeals to lawmakers to reject
the measure.
"Its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in
NATO and in the global war on terror," Bush said.
Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul criticized the decision to move the
measure toward a vote in the House.
"Unfortunately, some politicians in the United States have once again
sacrificed important matters to petty domestic politics despite all
calls to commonsense," said Gul, according to the state-run news
agency Anatolia. "This unacceptable decision by the committee,
like its predecessors, has no validity or respectability for the
Turkish nation."
In London Thursday, visiting Defense Secretary Robert Gates told
reporters the measure will damage U.S.-Turkish relations at a time
when U.S. forces in Iraq are relying heavily on Turkish permission
to use their airspace for U.S. air cargo flights.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Wednesday that passage
of the resolution by the House would gravely harm U.S.-Turkish
relations and U.S. interests in Europe and the Middle East.
"The United States recognizes the immense suffering of the Armenian
people due to mass killings and forced deportations at the end of the
Ottoman Empire," McCormack said in a statement. "We support a full and
fair accounting of the atrocities that befell as many as 1.5 million
Armenians during World War I" – which he said the measure doesn’t do.
Following Wednesday’s vote, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said
he would call the Turkish ambassador to Washington, and that Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice would talk to Turkish leaders on Thursday.
U.S. diplomats have been quietly preparing Turkish officials for
weeks for the likelihood that the resolution would pass, and asking
for a muted response.
Burns said the Turks "have not been threatening anything specific"
in response to the vote, and that he hopes the "disappointment can
be limited to statements."
"The Turkish government leaders know there is a separation of powers
in the United States, that today’s action was an action by the House
Foreign Affairs Committee, that this was not an action supported by
President Bush and the executive branch of our government," he said.
The Bush administration has expressed concern that the vote could
lead to Turkey cutting off crucial supply lines to Iraq. Defense
Secretary Robert Gates said ahead of the vote that 70 percent of U.S.
air cargo headed for Iraq goes through Turkey, as does about one-third
of the fuel used by the U.S. military in Iraq.
"Access to airfields and to the roads and so on in Turkey would very
much be put at risk if this resolution passes, and Turkey reacts as
strongly as we believe they will," Gates said.
The vote also came as Turkish warplanes and helicopter gunships
attacked suspected positions of Kurdish rebels near Iraq on Wednesday,
a possible prelude to a cross-border operation that the Bush
administration has opposed. The United States, already preoccupied
with efforts to stabilize other areas of Iraq, believes that Turkish
intervention in the relatively peaceful north could further destabilize
the country.
The committee’s vote was a triumph for well-organized Armenian-American
interest groups who have lobbied Congress for decades to pass a
resolution.
Following the debate and vote, which was attended by aging Armenian
emigres who lived through the atrocities in what is now Turkey in
their youth, the interest groups said they would fight to ensure
approval by the full House.
"It is long past time for the U.S. government to acknowledge and
affirm this horrible chapter of history – the first genocide of the
20th century and a part of history that we must never forget," said
Bryan Ardouny, executive director of the Armenian Assembly of America.