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'GENOCIDE' RESOLUTION ANGERS TURKEY
Glenn Kessler; The Washington Post
The News Tribune , WA
Oct 10 2007
WASHINGTON - A proposed House resolution that would label as "genocide"
the deaths of Armenians more than 90 years ago during the Ottoman
Empire has won the support of a majority of House members.
But the backing has unleashed a lobbying blitz by the Bush
administration and other opponents who say the resolution would
greatly harm relations with Turkey, a key ally in the Iraq war.
All eight living former secretaries of state have signed a joint
letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., warning that the
nonbinding resolution "would endanger our national security interests."
Three former defense secretaries, in their own letter, said Turkey
probably would cut off U.S. access to a critical air base. The
government of Turkey is spending more than $300,000 a month on
communications specialists and high-powered lobbyists, including
former Rep. Bob Livingston, R-La., to defeat the initiative.
Pelosi, whose congressional district has a large Armenian population,
has brushed aside such concerns and said she supports bringing the
resolution, for the first time, to a full vote in the House, where
more than half of the members have signed on as co-sponsors. The House
Foreign Affairs Committee, which has passed such a resolution before,
is set to vote on it today.
House Resolution 106, officially the Affirmation of the United
States Record on the Armenian Genocide, has been pushed doggedly by
a three-term congressman whose Southern California district contains
the largest concentration of Armenian Americans in the country.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., won his seat in 2000 after his Republican
predecessor was sandbagged when then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert
reneged on a pledge and pulled the bill from the floor after a
last-minute plea from President Clinton.
Schiff, who defeated Rep. James Rogan after Hastert killed the floor
vote, said the deaths so long ago still resonate with Armenians.
"It is an insight you get when you have lots of Armenian constituents,"
he said. "But imagine losing the entire family and having the successor
state say it never happened."
Few people deny that massacres killed hundreds of thousands of Armenian
men, women and children during and immediately after World War I. But
Turkish officials and some historians say that the deaths resulted
from forced relocations and widespread fighting when the 600-year-old
Ottoman Empire collapsed, not from a deliberate campaign of genocide -
and that hundreds of thousands of Turks also died during that time.
Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy noted that the Turkish military cut
contacts with the French military and terminated defense contracts
under negotiation after the French National Assembly voted in 2006
to criminalize the denial of Armenian genocide.
Glenn Kessler; The Washington Post
The News Tribune , WA
Oct 10 2007
WASHINGTON - A proposed House resolution that would label as "genocide"
the deaths of Armenians more than 90 years ago during the Ottoman
Empire has won the support of a majority of House members.
But the backing has unleashed a lobbying blitz by the Bush
administration and other opponents who say the resolution would
greatly harm relations with Turkey, a key ally in the Iraq war.
All eight living former secretaries of state have signed a joint
letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., warning that the
nonbinding resolution "would endanger our national security interests."
Three former defense secretaries, in their own letter, said Turkey
probably would cut off U.S. access to a critical air base. The
government of Turkey is spending more than $300,000 a month on
communications specialists and high-powered lobbyists, including
former Rep. Bob Livingston, R-La., to defeat the initiative.
Pelosi, whose congressional district has a large Armenian population,
has brushed aside such concerns and said she supports bringing the
resolution, for the first time, to a full vote in the House, where
more than half of the members have signed on as co-sponsors. The House
Foreign Affairs Committee, which has passed such a resolution before,
is set to vote on it today.
House Resolution 106, officially the Affirmation of the United
States Record on the Armenian Genocide, has been pushed doggedly by
a three-term congressman whose Southern California district contains
the largest concentration of Armenian Americans in the country.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., won his seat in 2000 after his Republican
predecessor was sandbagged when then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert
reneged on a pledge and pulled the bill from the floor after a
last-minute plea from President Clinton.
Schiff, who defeated Rep. James Rogan after Hastert killed the floor
vote, said the deaths so long ago still resonate with Armenians.
"It is an insight you get when you have lots of Armenian constituents,"
he said. "But imagine losing the entire family and having the successor
state say it never happened."
Few people deny that massacres killed hundreds of thousands of Armenian
men, women and children during and immediately after World War I. But
Turkish officials and some historians say that the deaths resulted
from forced relocations and widespread fighting when the 600-year-old
Ottoman Empire collapsed, not from a deliberate campaign of genocide -
and that hundreds of thousands of Turks also died during that time.
Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy noted that the Turkish military cut
contacts with the French military and terminated defense contracts
under negotiation after the French National Assembly voted in 2006
to criminalize the denial of Armenian genocide.