| U.S. administration to block Armenian genocide bill |
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06/03/2010 12:26 (707 Day 15:54 minutes ago) | |||||
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The FINANCIAL -- WASHINGTON. The U.S. government will "work very hard" to block a controversial resolution condemning as genocide the mass killings of Armenians by Turks during World War I, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on March 5.
"We are against this decision. Now we believe that the US Congress will not take any decision on this subject," the BBC quoted Clinton as saying at a news conference in Guatemala.
She added that the government would "work very hard" to ensure that it would not reach the full House floor.
The U.S. State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, confirmed on March 5 that the government would seek to block the bill.
"We don't think any further congressional action is appropriate," he said at the department meeting. "We continue to believe that the best way for Turkey and Armenia to address their shared past is through their ongoing effort to normalize relations."
The Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Thursday 23-22 in support of the resolution following almost six hours of heated debates.
Ankara condemned the bill and recalled its newly appointed ambassador to the United States, Namik Tan, for consultations.
President Abdullah Gul said Turkey would "not be responsible for the negative results of this vote."
Turkey, which has always refused to recognize the killings of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians at the end of the Ottoman period in 1915 as an act of genocide, earlier warned Washington that this move could jeopardize U.S-Turkish cooperation and set back the talks aimed at opening the border between Turkey and Armenia, which has been closed since 1993 on Ankara's initiative.
A similar vote in the committee was approved by a wider margin in 2007, but the U.S. Bush administration, anxious to retain Turkish cooperation in Iraq, scuttled a full House vote.
A number of states have recognized the killings in Armenia as the first genocide of the 20th century, including Russia, France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Greece, as well as 42 of the 50 U.S. states. The Vatican, the European Parliament and the World Council of Churches have also denounced the killings as genocide. Uruguay was the first to do so in 1965.
However, on the eve of the vote, the Obama administration urged the committee not to approve the resolution, fearing it could alienate Washington's NATO ally, whose help the White House considers invaluable in solving confrontations in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
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