Reuters News
Writing by Ibon Villelabeitia; reporting by Susan Cornwell, Washington
Monday March 1, 2010 3:31pm EST
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey warned on Monday relations with its ally the United States would be damaged if a U.S. congressional panel votes this week to label a World War One-era massacre of Armenians by Turkish forces as genocide.
The Armenian issue has poisoned ties between NATO member Turkey and the United States in the past. In 2007, Ankara recalled its ambassador to Washington for consultations after a U.S. panel approved a similar bill.
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.
Ankara has said such a resolution would also hurt efforts by Turkey and Armenia to normalize ties.
"We want to believe that the Committee members will act responsibly and that they are aware that the acceptance of the bill could damage Turkey-U.S. ties as well as the efforts of peace and stability in the South Caucasus," Turkey's Foreign Ministry spokesman Burak Ozugergin told reporters.
The nonbinding resolution, to be voted on Thursday by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, would call on U.S. President Barack Obama to ensure that U.S. policy formally refers to the massacre as "genocide" and to use that term when he delivers his annual message on the issue in April -- something Obama avoided doing last year.
Obama visited Turkey last April, and his administration sees Turkey as a key ally whose help it needs in solving confrontations from Iran to Afghanistan.
Turkish lawmakers visiting Washington to lobby U.S. lawmakers against the resolution said the Obama administration should do more to stop it.
When the issue last arose in Congress in 2007, then-President George W. Bush and some Cabinet members explicitly warned against passage, and the measure never came to a vote on the House floor.
"My impression is that the (Obama) administration is not fighting against it very effectively," said Sukru Elekdag, a lawmaker and former Turkish ambassador to the United States.
Elekdag said Turkish cooperation with the United States across the region was at risk if the measure passed. Turkey is a transit route for U.S. troops going to and from Iraq, has troops in Afghanistan and has mediated with Iran, he said.
"Our hands (are) everywhere trying to help your country to solve problems that it faces ... As we are sensitive to your problems, you have to be sensitive to our problems also."
The chairman of the Turkish parliament's foreign affairs committee, Murat Mercan, said passage of the U.S. resolution could jeopardize Turkish parliamentary approval of protocols that Turkey and Armenia signed last year to normalize ties.
Under those protocols a commission would be set up to investigate the events of 1915, Mercan said. He and Elekdag spoke to reporters at the Turkish embassy in Washington.
No comments:
Post a Comment