Reuters News
Reporting by Susan Cornwell, editing by Matt Spetalnick
Thursda March 4, 2010 3:57pm EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A congressional panel voted on Thursday to label as "genocide" the World War One-era massacre of Armenians by Turkish forces, despite pressure from the Obama administration and Turkey to drop the matter.
The controversial measure passed the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee in a closer-than-expected vote of 23-22.
The issue puts President Barack Obama between NATO ally Turkey, which rejects calling the events genocide, and an important U.S. Armenian-American constituency and their backers in Congress ahead of a November congressional election.
Turkey had warned its ties with the United States would be damaged and Ankara's efforts to normalize relations with Armenia could be harmed if the resolution passed, even though the vote was non-binding.
Ronald Reagan was the only U.S. president to publicly call the killings genocide.
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BONUS
Pierre's Middle East Issues Blog
written by Pierre Tristam
Saturday April 25, 2009
While campaigning for the presidency, when every vote mattered, Obama, was unequivocal:
So much for those facts.I also share with Armenian Americans – so many of whom are descended from genocide survivors - a principled commitment to commemorating and ending genocide. That starts with acknowledging the tragic instances of genocide in world history. As a U.S. Senator, I have stood with the Armenian American community in calling for Turkey's acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide. Two years ago, I criticized the Secretary of State for the firing of U.S. Ambassador to Armenia, John Evans, after he properly used the term "genocide" to describe Turkey's slaughter of thousands of Armenians starting in 1915. I shared with Secretary Rice my firmly held conviction that the Armenian Genocide is not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence. The facts are undeniable.
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