US House Committee Passes Armenian Genocide Resolution
VOA News
A U.S. congressional committee has passed a resolution declaring the World War I -era killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide, despite a White House warning against the action.
The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee voted 23 to 22 in passing the resolution Thursday. It now goes to the full House for consideration.
Earlier Thursday, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton contacted the chairman of the committee, Howard Berman and indicated that further congressional action could hurt progress on normalizing Turkish-Armenian relations.
Turkey warned that its relations with the United States will be damaged if the House of Representatives passes the measure.
The White House said President Barack Obama spoke Wednesday with Turkish President Abdullah Gul and expressed appreciation for Turkish efforts to normalize relations with Armenia. Mr. Obama urged ratification of protocols signed between the countries last year.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday the U.S. focus is on ensuring that progress is made on the issue that has divided Turkey and Armenia for almost 100 years.
Armenians say the massacres of some 1.5 million people between 1915 and 1923 were the result of an orchestrated campaign by the Ottoman Turks. Turkey strongly rejects the label of genocide, saying far fewer Armenians died and that they were killed in a civil war in which Turks also died.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Wednesday that if the resolution is adopted at the committee level, the Obama administration should take steps to ensure it is not voted on by Congress.
Turkey is a key ally of the United States and serves as a major supply route for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr. Obama pledged during his 2008 presidential campaign that he would recognize the deaths as genocide. As president, he described the killings as one of the "greatest atrocities" of the 20th century, but has not called them genocide.
Turkish and Armenian leaders signed protocols last year that would establish bilateral relations and open their shared border, but they have not been approved by either nation's parliament.
3 Comments
The US also should openly come out openly against acts of genocide on Tamils and the repressive acts, that are being perpetrated daily to the Tamils in Tamil Eelam(TE).
There is planned colonisation of soldiers on top of all the discomfort.
Of course, the soldiers who are settled in TE, will be on a future day ,taken to the war crimes court in the Hague as accomplices and perpetrators of planned genocide of Tamils and disgracefully punished.
The problem is, the Sinhalese are arrogant in their belief against the truth that there is no Tamil homeland. This is the reason for their disrespect and evil attitude.
If the Tamils have no homeland in TE, the Sinhalese also have no claim on the South as their homeland. They are migrants from India.
The unspoken and hidden truth is that when Marco Polo visited the island in 400AD, he found a king named Sandanam, a Tamil king, in charge of the whole island. He has recorded this in his writings.
Further, the last king of Kandy, was a Tamil king and his wife was Rengamma, a Tamil.
The Sinhalese should be made to know the truth and accept it, if all in the island desire peace.
I wonder where they stand on the issue of the 3-4 million dead in the Vietnam war? All those victims of the cities, villages and forrests obliterated by high explosives, napalm and agent orange.
This is a good learning point to Tamils who are preaching that international community will take care of our liberation struggle.
All the countries are only interested in their own national interest. Mr Ban is interested in his second term.
If Obama back track on his words like this, to whom else we can trust?