New York Times
March 5 2010
U.S. Vows Bid to Halt Armenian Genocide Measure Sign in to Recommend
By REUTERS
Published: March 5, 2010
Filed at 6:08 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration on Friday sought to
limit fallout from a U.S. resolution branding the World War One-era
massacre of Armenians by Turkish forces as "genocide," and vowed to
stop it from going further in Congress.
Turkey was infuriated and recalled its ambassador after a House of
Representatives committee on Thursday approved the nonbinding measure
condemning killings that took place nearly 100 years ago, in the last
days of the Ottoman Empire.
A Democratic leadership aide told Reuters there were no plans "at this
point" to schedule a vote of the full House on the measure, and a
State Department official said this was the administration’s
understanding as well.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, facing questions about the issue
while travelling in Latin America, declared Congress should drop the
matter now.
"The Obama administration strongly opposes the resolution that was
passed by only one vote in the House committee and will work very hard
to make sure it does not go to the House floor," she said in Guatemala
City.
The resolution squeaked through the House Foreign Affairs Committee
23-22 on Thursday despite a last-minute appeal against it from the
Obama administration, which feared damage to ties with Turkey. The
NATO ally is crucial to U.S. interests in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and
the Middle East.
The issue puts President Barack Obama between Turkey, a secular Muslim
democracy that looks towards the West, and Armenian-Americans, an
important constituency in some states like California and New Jersey,
ahead of the November congressional elections.
Similar resolutions have been introduced in past sessions of Congress,
but never passed both the House and the Senate. In 2007, the same
House committee passed such a resolution but it never came up on the
floor after then-President George W. Bush weighed in strongly against
it.
DAMAGED TIES
After the committee’s vote on Thursday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan warned of possible damage to ties with the United States.
On Friday, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said chances of
Turkey’s parliament ratifying peace protocols with Christian Armenia
were jeopardized by the vote on the 1915 massacres.
One U.S. analyst said the normalization accords were mired even before
the U.S. resolution upset Turkey.
"The protocols were already in trouble and … what happened yesterday
makes much life much more difficult," said Henri Barkey, a visiting
scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former
State Department official.
Muslim Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed by
Ottoman Turks but denies that up to 1.5 million died and that it
amounted to genocide — a term employed by many Western historians and
some foreign parliaments.
The U.S. envoy in Ankara, James Jeffrey, distanced the Obama
administration from the resolution after being invited for talks by
Turkish officials. "We believe that Congress should not make a
decision on the issue," he said.
There was also anger in Baku, Azerbaijan, a close Muslim and
Turkic-speaking ally of Turkey. Its parliament warned that the U.S.
resolution could "reduce to zero all previous efforts" to resolve a
long-standing conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the
territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Kenneth Hachikian, chairman of the Armenian National Committee of
America, said supporters would gather next week to do a "whip count"
of House backers of the genocide resolution.
The resolution has 137 co-sponsors in the House, which is one measure
of support and not close to the majority of 217 needed to pass.
Advocates need to show they have enough votes to pass the measure for
it to be brought to the House floor, Democratic congressional aides
said.
The resolution urges Obama to use the term "genocide" when he delivers
his annual message on the Armenian massacres in April. He avoided
using the term last year although as a presidential candidate he said
the killings were genocide.
Ronald Reagan was the only U.S. president to publicly call the
killings genocide.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn, editing by Matt Spetalnick and
Vicki Allen)
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