10/10 NYTimes: House Panel Votes to Condemn Armenian Killings as Genocide

House Panel Votes to Condemn Armenian Killings as Genocide
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 — A House committee voted late this afternoon to condemn the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey in World War I as an act of genocide, rebuffing an intense campaign by the White House and warnings from Turkey’s government that the vote would gravely strain relations with the United States.

The vote by the House Foreign Relations Committee was nonbinding and so largely symbolic, but its consequences could reach far beyond bilateral relations and spill into the war in Iraq.

Turkish officials and lawmakers warned that if the resolution is approved by the full House, they would reconsider supporting the American war effort, which includes permission to ship essential supplies through Turkey and northern Iraq.

Mr. Bush appeared on the South Lawn of the White House before the vote and implored the House not to take up the issue, only to have the majority of the committee disregard his warning at the end of the day, by a vote of 27 to 21.

“We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people that began in 1915,” Mr. Bush said in remarks that, reflecting official American policy, carefully avoided the use of the word genocide. “This resolution is not the right response to these historic mass killings, and its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror.”

The resolution, which has quietly moved forward over the last few weeks, provoked a fierce lobbying fight that pitting the politically influential Armenian-American community against the Turkish government, which hired equally influential former lawmakers like Robert Livingston, Republican of Louisiana, and Richard A. Gephardt, the former Democratic House majority leader, who backed a similar resolution when he was in Congress.

Backers of the resolution said Congressional action was overdue.

“Despite President George Bush twisting arms and making deals, justice prevailed,” said Representative Brad Sherman, Democrat of California and a sponsor of the resolution. “For if we hope to stop future genocides we need to admit to those horrific acts of the past.”

The question of what happened to the Armenians in Turkey beginning in 1915 has perennially transfixed Congress and bedeviled presidents of both parties.

When the issue last arose in 2000, a similar resolution also won approval by a House committee, but President Bill Clinton then succeeded in urging a Republican speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, to withdraw the measure before the full House could vote. That time, too, Turkey had warned of canceling arms sales and withdrawing support for American air forces then patrolling northern Iraq under the auspices of the United Nations.

The current speaker, Nancy Pelosi, faced pressure from Democrats — especially colleagues in California, New Jersey and Michigan, with their large Armenian communities — to revive the resolution again after her party gained control of the House and Senate this year. There is Democratic support for the resolution in the Senate, but it is unlikely to move in the months ahead because of a shortage of time and Republican opposition.

Still, the Turkish government has made clear that it would regard House passage alone as a harsh American indictment. The sharply worded Turkish warnings against the resolution, especially threats to cut off support for the American war in Iraq, seemed to embolden some of the resolution’s supporters. “If they use this to destabilize our solders in Iraq, well, then shame on them,” said Representative Joseph Crowley, a Democrat from New York who voted for it.

The Democratic leadership, however, appeared divided. Representative Rahm Emanuel, the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House who worked in the Clinton White House when the issue came up in 2000, opposes the resolution.

In an apparent effort to temper the anger caused by the issue, Democrats said they were considering a parallel resolution that would praise Turkey’s close relations with the United States even as it passes the one that blames the forerunner of modern Turkey for one of the worst crimes in history.

“Neither of these resolutions is necessary,” a White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said this evening, adding that Mr. Bush was “very disappointed” with the House committee’s vote.

Few dispute the fact that hundreds of thousands of Armenians were killed as the Ottoman Empire collapsed during World War I, but the scope and significance of those deaths have been fiercely debated ever since.

Armenians say that more than one million of their people were killed from 1915 to 1923 in a systemic campaign by the fraying Ottoman Empire to drive them out of eastern Turkey. Turks acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died, but said the deaths, along with thousands of others, resulted from the war that ended with the creation of modern Turkey in 1923.

Mr. Bush discussed the issue in the White House this morning with his senior national security aides. Speaking by secure video from Baghdad, the senior American officials in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, raised the resolution and warned that its passage could harm the war effort in Iraq, officials said.

Appearing outside the West Wing after that meeting, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates noted that about 70 percent of all air cargo sent to Iraq passes through or comes from Turkey, as does 30 percent of the fuel and virtually all the new armored vehicles designed to withstand mines and bombs.

“They believe clearly that access to airfields and to the roads and so on in Turkey would be very much put at risk if this resolution passes and the Turks react as strongly as we believe they will,” Mr. Gates said, referring to the remarks of General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker.

Turkey severed military ties with France after its Parliament voted in 2006 to make the denial of Armenian genocide a crime.

As the House committee prepared to vote, officials from Mr. Bush himself to the American ambassador to Turkey, Ross Wilson, cajoled lawmakers by telephone.

Representative Mike Pence, a conservative Republican from Indiana who has backed the resolution in the past, said Mr. Bush persuaded him to change his position and vote no. He described the decision as gut-wrenching, underscoring the emotions stirred in American politics by a 92-year-old question.

“While this is still the right position,” Mr. Pence said, referring to the use of genocide to describe those events, “it is not the right time.”

The House Democratic leadership met this morning with Turkey’s ambassador to Washington, Nabi Sensoy, and other Turkish officials who argued against moving ahead with a vote. But Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, who now holds Mr. Gephardt’s old job as majority leader, said he and Ms. Pelosi would bring the resolution to the floor before Congress adjourns this year.

In Turkey, a fresh wave of violence raised the specter of a Turkish incursion into northern Iraq in response to attacks by Kurdish rebels. The United States is strongly urging against such incursions. A policeman was killed and six others were wounded in a bomb attack in the Kurdish town of Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey tonight, the state-run Anatolian News Agency reported.

The Associated Press reported from the town of Sirnak that Turkish warplanes and helicopters were attacking positions along southern border with Iraq suspected of belonging to Kurdish rebels who have been fighting Turkish forces for years.

The Turkish government continued to prepare to request Parliament’s permission for an offensive into Iraq, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested that a vote could be held after the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Parliamentary approval would bring Turkey the closest it has been since 2003 to a full-scale military offensive into Iraq.

Sedat Laciner, the director of the International Strategic Research Institution, said the Turkish public felt betrayed by what is perceived as a lack of American support for Turkey in its battle against Kurdish rebels.

“American officials could think that Turkish people would ultimately forget about the lack of U.S. support in this struggle,” Mr. Laciner said. “Memories of Turks, however, are not that easy to erase once it hits sensitive spots.”

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Sabrina Tavernise from Baghdad

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/washington/10cnd-armenia.html?_r=3&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1194325690-g48xGHbueQp6nlpAwgQjzA