TURKISH MPS VISIT USA TO TRY TO PREVENT ARMENIAN RESOLUTION
Anatolia News Agency, Turkey
Nov 21 2006
"Turkish MPs reiterate sensitivity on so-called Armenian genocide"
Washington D.C., 21 Nov: A group of Turkish parliamentarians visited
Washington D.C. in a bid to persuade congressional leaders to halt
so-called Armenian genocide resolutions after Democrats seized control
of both the US Senate and the House of Representatives.
Nancy Pelosi, who is in line to become the speaker of the House, has
promised to support a so-called genocide resolution during her election
campaign, underlining fears in Turkey that the new Congress might
adopt such a bill which has been prevented by the Bush administration
since it came to power in 2000.
The group, headed by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s
foreign policy adviser Egemen Bagis, held meetings with US legislators
as well as State Department’s counter-terrorism coordinator Henry
Crumpton and FBI’s New York director Mark Mershon.
Bagis played down adoption of a so-called genocide resolution at a
press meeting.
"The Armenian issue won’t be the first priority of the Democrat
Party. There are other issues," he told journalists after an annual
session of the US Congress Turkey Working Group in West Virginia.
In September 2005, the House International Relations Committee
passed a bill recognizing so-called Armenian genocide. But Republican
Congressman Dennis Hastert, the outgoing House Speaker, did not take
the bill to a full House vote.
Bagis also said a joint effort was underway with Mark Parris, former US
ambassador to Ankara, and former Republican congressman Bob Livingston,
Turkey’s main lobbyist in the USA, against an Armenian resolution.
