BUSH CALLS ARMENIAN MASSACRE "GREATEST TRAGEDIES"
Xinhua, China
April 25 2008
WASHINGTON, April 24 (Xinhua) — U.S. President George W. Bush called
on Thursday the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Empire as
"one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century."
"I join the Armenian community in America and around the world in
commemorating this tragedy and mourning the loss of so many innocent
lives," he said in a statement that stopped short of calling it
genocide.
Armenians claim that more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a
systematic genocide in the hands of the Ottomans during World War I,
before modern Turkey was born in 1923.
Turkey categorically rejects the claim, insisting that some 300,000
Armenians and thousands of Turks are victims of widespread chaos and
governmental breakdown as the 600-year-old empire collapsed in the
years before 1923.
In his statement, Bush said "we welcome the efforts by individuals in
Armenia and Turkey to foster reconciliation and peace, and support
joint efforts for an open examination of the past in search of a
shared understanding of these tragic events."
"We look forward to the realization of a fully normalized
Armenia-Turkey relationship," he said.
The Bush administration appealed last October to Congress to drop a
resolution that designated the deaths of Armenians from 1915 to 1923
as genocide amid concerns that Turkey might enact damaging diplomatic
reprisals.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
