Turkey Slams U.S. Over Armenian Genocide Bill
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu denounced a U.S. congressional committee over the weekend for scheduling a vote on an Armenian genocide resolution, saying that its passage would seriously harm Turkey’s relations with both the United States and Armenia.
“Why is that draft included on the [committee] agenda now?” he said, according to a “Hurriyet” report cited by the Azerbaijani APA news agency on Monday. “Let them not expect from us the ratification of protocols by using April 24 as a tool for pressure.
“The draft’s inclusion on the agenda is not in the interests of the USA, Turkey and Armenia. This process can lead both our bilateral relations with the USA and Turkey’s rapprochement with Armenia into deadlock.”
The resolution in question, which was introduced by pro-Armenian U.S. lawmakers a year ago, urges President Barack Obama to “accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians [in the Ottoman Empire] as genocide.” Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Friday that the panel will vote on it early next month.
The vote will come less than two months before the 95th anniversary of the start of the mass killings and deportations. Turkey vehemently condemned similar bills that were passed by the committee but never put to a full House vote in the past. It says the killings occurred on a smaller scale and were not the result of a premeditated government effort to exterminate Ottoman Turkey’s Armenian population.
Davutoglu said he raised Ankara’s concerns with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg at a meeting held on Saturday on the sidelines of an international security conference in Munich. Speaking to Turkish journalists on his way back from the conference, he claimed that Armenia was also behind the scheduling of the congressional committee vote.
“At first, Armenia’s Constitutional Court made comments about the signed protocols that are unacceptable to us,” Davutoglu said, according to APA. “Then the Armenian side retreated from a constructive position during the [last] meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian. Now such a bill is being included on the U.S. Congress agenda.”
“The sequence of these three events is making us think that this is not happening by chance,” added Davutoglu.
Official Yerevan, meanwhile, signaled on Monday its satisfaction with progress of the genocide bill. When asked by RFE/RL to comment on the planned vote on the bill, an Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman cited statements on the issue made by President Serzh Sarkisian and Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian in recent months.
Sarkisian said in an October address to the nation that the Armenian genocide “must be recognized and condemned by the entire progressive humanity.” Nalbandian, for his part, told RFE/RL last month that Armenia “will never cast doubt on the importance of international recognition of the genocide.”
Copyright (c) 2009. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.
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