Bush Calls Armenian Massacre "Greatest Tragedies"

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

www.chinaview.cn

Emil Lazarian

“I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS