1915 (7 Viewers)
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It's true that they are political reasons but all the lifes on Earth to have not the same value. How can the powerfull political forces of this planet to perform two weights and two measures.
I always see the politics of USA to say that they will bring democracy to Iraq, Afganistan, Iran etc, and they dont do anything to stop killings in Darfur and Cambodia. Does oil have biggest value from the human life?
It's rhetorical questions all these.
I always see the politics of USA to say that they will bring democracy to Iraq, Afganistan, Iran etc, and they dont do anything to stop killings in Darfur and Cambodia. Does oil have biggest value from the human life?
It's rhetorical questions all these.
Turkish envoy warns against U.S. genocide resolution
WASHINGTON — Approval of an Armenian genocide resolution by the House of Representatives would have "very, very unfortunate" consequences for U.S.-Turkish relations, Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy warned Friday.
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The House Foreign Affairs Committee will consider the diplomatically charged resolution Wednesday. In an interview, Sensoy said "we are deploying all the efforts that we can" to defeat the nonbinding measure, which he thinks could unravel a strategic alliance.
"I fear— and expect, in fact— a strong reaction from the Turkish people," Sensoy said, "and of course no government can remain indifferent to this reaction."
Introduced by Rep. George Radanovich , R-Calif., and Rep. Adam Schiff , D-Calif., the 1,780-word resolution declares that "the Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923." Armenians say an estimated 1.5 million died during the period.
Symbolically, the resolution puts the House on record as characterizing the Armenian slaughter as genocide. Politically, it has high visibility in regions with large Armenian-American populations, including Southern California , California's San Joaquin Valley , Michigan and New Jersey .
"Silence is genocide's greatest ally, and I am very happy that the silence regarding the Armenian genocide will be ending next week," said Rep. Jim Costa , D-Calif. "It is well past due that the Armenian genocide finally be recognized as such in our nation."
The last time an Armenian genocide resolution came before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in 2005, it was approved 40-7. Congressional Republican leaders blocked it from reaching the House floor.
The House committee likewise had approved an Armenian genocide resolution in 2000, and House Republican leaders also killed that measure.
This year, 226 House members publicly support the resolution, including 23 members of the foreign affairs panel. Nonetheless, Sensoy said "it will be a close race" Wednesday.
Certainly, no expense is being spared. Justice Department records show that Turkey signed a $100,000 -a-month contract in May with the lobbying firm DLA Piper, one of several hired to fight the resolution.
Separately, Turkey paid Bob Livingston , former House Appropriations Committee chairman, $625,000 for work from March 1 to Aug. 31 , records show. Last month, Turkey added the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard to its roster at $113,000 a month.
"It is out of necessity, of course," Sensoy said. "On the Armenian side, many people are working, and we need the lobbying firms to have certain access on Capitol Hill."
"It is true that what happened in 1915 is a very sad episode in our common history," he said. "Hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished. Hundreds of thousands of Turks perished. . . . We don't need a new generation of people to hate one another."
He said he did "hope and believe" that the committee's chairman, Rep. Tom Lantos , D-Calif., would oppose the resolution.
Lantos won't tip his hand before Wednesday's committee hearing, said his spokeswoman, Lynne Weil .
Lantos opposed the 2000 resolution, citing its "substantial negative effects on our strategic interests in the region."
He voted for the 2005 resolution, to chastise Turkey for stopping the United States from using the country as a launching pad for the 2003 invasion of Iraq , he said.
" Turkey was not very popular at that point," Sensoy conceded.
Neither is the United States currently very popular in Turkey .
Almost four-fifths of Turks surveyed earlier this year favored "strong action" by their government if an Armenian resolution passes. More than 80 percent said they'd oppose Turkey helping out in nearby Iraq . Many said they'd consider boycotting U.S. products. American exports to Turkey totaled about $5.4 billion last year.
"If this resolution does pass, the Turkish government and Turkish people will take it as a personal insult," Sensoy said, while stressing that he doesn't want to be "misconstrued as threatening" lawmakers with retaliation.
On Friday, the International Association of Genocide Scholars retorted in a letter that France and Turkey "are engaged in more bilateral trade than ever before" despite the French National Assembly's support for a genocide resolution.
"We would not expect the U.S. government to be intimidated by an unreliable ally with a deeply disturbing human rights record," Genocide Watch founder Gregory H. Stanton and the other scholars wrote.
The 62-year-old Sensoy is a veteran diplomat who previously served as Turkey's ambassador in Moscow and Madrid . He was embassy counselor in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan declared that "like the genocide of the Armenians before it . . . the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten." Sensoy called this a "very unwelcome statement," but noted that other presidents since "have avoided use" of what he termed "the G word."
Most recently, eight former secretaries of state from both parties cautioned Congress against the dangers of dictating history.
yahoo.com
It's about frickin time
WASHINGTON — Approval of an Armenian genocide resolution by the House of Representatives would have "very, very unfortunate" consequences for U.S.-Turkish relations, Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy warned Friday.
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The House Foreign Affairs Committee will consider the diplomatically charged resolution Wednesday. In an interview, Sensoy said "we are deploying all the efforts that we can" to defeat the nonbinding measure, which he thinks could unravel a strategic alliance.
"I fear— and expect, in fact— a strong reaction from the Turkish people," Sensoy said, "and of course no government can remain indifferent to this reaction."
Introduced by Rep. George Radanovich , R-Calif., and Rep. Adam Schiff , D-Calif., the 1,780-word resolution declares that "the Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923." Armenians say an estimated 1.5 million died during the period.
Symbolically, the resolution puts the House on record as characterizing the Armenian slaughter as genocide. Politically, it has high visibility in regions with large Armenian-American populations, including Southern California , California's San Joaquin Valley , Michigan and New Jersey .
"Silence is genocide's greatest ally, and I am very happy that the silence regarding the Armenian genocide will be ending next week," said Rep. Jim Costa , D-Calif. "It is well past due that the Armenian genocide finally be recognized as such in our nation."
The last time an Armenian genocide resolution came before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in 2005, it was approved 40-7. Congressional Republican leaders blocked it from reaching the House floor.
The House committee likewise had approved an Armenian genocide resolution in 2000, and House Republican leaders also killed that measure.
This year, 226 House members publicly support the resolution, including 23 members of the foreign affairs panel. Nonetheless, Sensoy said "it will be a close race" Wednesday.
Certainly, no expense is being spared. Justice Department records show that Turkey signed a $100,000 -a-month contract in May with the lobbying firm DLA Piper, one of several hired to fight the resolution.
Separately, Turkey paid Bob Livingston , former House Appropriations Committee chairman, $625,000 for work from March 1 to Aug. 31 , records show. Last month, Turkey added the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard to its roster at $113,000 a month.
"It is out of necessity, of course," Sensoy said. "On the Armenian side, many people are working, and we need the lobbying firms to have certain access on Capitol Hill."
"It is true that what happened in 1915 is a very sad episode in our common history," he said. "Hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished. Hundreds of thousands of Turks perished. . . . We don't need a new generation of people to hate one another."
He said he did "hope and believe" that the committee's chairman, Rep. Tom Lantos , D-Calif., would oppose the resolution.
Lantos won't tip his hand before Wednesday's committee hearing, said his spokeswoman, Lynne Weil .
Lantos opposed the 2000 resolution, citing its "substantial negative effects on our strategic interests in the region."
He voted for the 2005 resolution, to chastise Turkey for stopping the United States from using the country as a launching pad for the 2003 invasion of Iraq , he said.
" Turkey was not very popular at that point," Sensoy conceded.
Neither is the United States currently very popular in Turkey .
Almost four-fifths of Turks surveyed earlier this year favored "strong action" by their government if an Armenian resolution passes. More than 80 percent said they'd oppose Turkey helping out in nearby Iraq . Many said they'd consider boycotting U.S. products. American exports to Turkey totaled about $5.4 billion last year.
"If this resolution does pass, the Turkish government and Turkish people will take it as a personal insult," Sensoy said, while stressing that he doesn't want to be "misconstrued as threatening" lawmakers with retaliation.
On Friday, the International Association of Genocide Scholars retorted in a letter that France and Turkey "are engaged in more bilateral trade than ever before" despite the French National Assembly's support for a genocide resolution.
"We would not expect the U.S. government to be intimidated by an unreliable ally with a deeply disturbing human rights record," Genocide Watch founder Gregory H. Stanton and the other scholars wrote.
The 62-year-old Sensoy is a veteran diplomat who previously served as Turkey's ambassador in Moscow and Madrid . He was embassy counselor in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan declared that "like the genocide of the Armenians before it . . . the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten." Sensoy called this a "very unwelcome statement," but noted that other presidents since "have avoided use" of what he termed "the G word."
Most recently, eight former secretaries of state from both parties cautioned Congress against the dangers of dictating history.
yahoo.com
It's about frickin time
At last..
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A House committee Wednesday evening narrowly approved a resolution that labels the killings of Armenians in Turkey during World War I as "genocide."
The House Foreign Affairs Committee passed the measure 27-21, even though President Bush and key figures lobbied hard against it.
The president, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said passage of the resolution would hurt relations with an important U.S. ally.
Bush urged lawmakers to oppose the resolution, which he said would cause "great harm" to U.S. relations with Turkey, which he called a key ally in NATO and the "global war on terror."
"We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people that began in 1915. This resolution is not the right response to those historic mass killings," Bush said at the White House.
But House Democratic leaders said earlier if the Foreign Affairs Committee passed the resolution, they intended to bring it to the House floor.
The resolution's sponsor, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, said the measure already had 226 co-sponsors, more than enough votes to pass "and the most support an Armenian genocide resolution has ever received."
Earlier, Rice and Gates made their comments jointly before reporters at the White House. They said Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military officer in Iraq; U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker; and Adm. William Fallon, head of the U.S. Central Command, raised concerns about the resolution.
"We recognize the feelings of those who want to express their concern and their disdain for what happened many years ago," Rice said. "But the passage of this resolution at this time would, indeed, be very problematic for everything that we're trying to do in the Middle East because we are very dependent on a good Turkish strategic ally to help with our efforts." Video Watch why Rice and Gates oppose the resolution »
The nonbinding resolution refers to the "genocide" of Armenians in the early 20th century during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which preceded the creation of modern Turkey in 1923.
"In the case that Armenian allegations are accepted, there will be serious problems in the relations between the two countries," Turkish President Abdullah Gul said in a letter to Bush.
Nabi Sensoy, Turkey's ambassador to the United States, told CNN the resolution's passage would be a "very injurious move to the psyche of the Turkish people."
He predicted a "backlash" in the country, saying there would be setbacks on several fronts: Turkish-American relations, Turkish-Armenian relations and the normalization of relations between the nations of Turkey and Armenia.
Gates said good relations with Turkey are vital because 70 percent of the air cargo intended for U.S. forces in Iraq and 30 percent of the fuel consumed by those forces flies through Turkey.
U.S. commanders, Gates said, "believe clearly that access to airfields and roads and so on in Turkey would very much be put at risk if this resolution passes and the Turks react as strongly as we believe they will."
"Our heavy dependence on the Turks for access is really the reason the commanders raised this and why we're so concerned about the resolution," Gates said.
The resolution calls on the president "to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian genocide, and for other purposes."
A similar resolution passed the committee by a 40-7 vote two years ago, but it never reached the full House floor. House Republican leader John Boehner, noting the critical military and strategic alliance with Turkey, said bringing the resolution to the floor would be "totally irresponsible."
"Let the historians decide what happened 90 years ago," Boehner said in a written statement.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer met with Turkish officials in Pelosi's office Wednesday morning. Hoyer said he and Pelosi informed the officials that they support the resolution.
Hoyer said he told officials that while he considers Turkey a strong ally, "this was about another government at another time."
"I believe that our government's position is clear -- that genocide was perpetrated against the Armenian people approximately 90 years ago and during the course of the First World War. And I believe that remembering that, noting that, is important so that we not paper over or allow the Ahmadinejads of the next decade or decades to deny a fact," Hoyer said.
Schiff, who represents a southern California district with many Armenian-Americans, refers to "the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide."
The term genocide is defined in dictionary.com as "the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group."
But the description is hotly disputed in Turkey, the predominantly Muslim, but modern and secular, pro-Western ally of the United States.
Turks argue that all peoples -- Armenians and Turks -- suffered during the warfare. But Armenians maintain there was an organized genocide by the Ottoman Turkish authorities, and have been campaigning across the world for official recognition of the genocide.
The resolution arrives at a particularly sensitive juncture in U.S.-Turkish relations. The United States has urged Turkey not to send its troops over the border into northern Iraq to fight Kurdish separatist rebels, who have launched some cross-border attacks against Turkish targets.
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Observers of U.S.-Turkish relations have argued the House resolution could make Turkey less inclined to use restraint in dealing with its longstanding problems with the Kurdistan Workers Party.
"The United States has a compelling historical and moral reason to recognize the Armenian genocide, which cost a million and a half people their lives," Schiff said. "But we also have a powerful contemporary reason as well. How can we take effective action against the genocide in Darfur if we lack the will to condemn genocide whenever and wherever it occurs?"
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A House committee Wednesday evening narrowly approved a resolution that labels the killings of Armenians in Turkey during World War I as "genocide."
The House Foreign Affairs Committee passed the measure 27-21, even though President Bush and key figures lobbied hard against it.
The president, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates said passage of the resolution would hurt relations with an important U.S. ally.
Bush urged lawmakers to oppose the resolution, which he said would cause "great harm" to U.S. relations with Turkey, which he called a key ally in NATO and the "global war on terror."
"We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people that began in 1915. This resolution is not the right response to those historic mass killings," Bush said at the White House.
But House Democratic leaders said earlier if the Foreign Affairs Committee passed the resolution, they intended to bring it to the House floor.
The resolution's sponsor, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, said the measure already had 226 co-sponsors, more than enough votes to pass "and the most support an Armenian genocide resolution has ever received."
Earlier, Rice and Gates made their comments jointly before reporters at the White House. They said Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. military officer in Iraq; U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker; and Adm. William Fallon, head of the U.S. Central Command, raised concerns about the resolution.
"We recognize the feelings of those who want to express their concern and their disdain for what happened many years ago," Rice said. "But the passage of this resolution at this time would, indeed, be very problematic for everything that we're trying to do in the Middle East because we are very dependent on a good Turkish strategic ally to help with our efforts." Video Watch why Rice and Gates oppose the resolution »
The nonbinding resolution refers to the "genocide" of Armenians in the early 20th century during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which preceded the creation of modern Turkey in 1923.
"In the case that Armenian allegations are accepted, there will be serious problems in the relations between the two countries," Turkish President Abdullah Gul said in a letter to Bush.
Nabi Sensoy, Turkey's ambassador to the United States, told CNN the resolution's passage would be a "very injurious move to the psyche of the Turkish people."
He predicted a "backlash" in the country, saying there would be setbacks on several fronts: Turkish-American relations, Turkish-Armenian relations and the normalization of relations between the nations of Turkey and Armenia.
Gates said good relations with Turkey are vital because 70 percent of the air cargo intended for U.S. forces in Iraq and 30 percent of the fuel consumed by those forces flies through Turkey.
U.S. commanders, Gates said, "believe clearly that access to airfields and roads and so on in Turkey would very much be put at risk if this resolution passes and the Turks react as strongly as we believe they will."
"Our heavy dependence on the Turks for access is really the reason the commanders raised this and why we're so concerned about the resolution," Gates said.
The resolution calls on the president "to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian genocide, and for other purposes."
A similar resolution passed the committee by a 40-7 vote two years ago, but it never reached the full House floor. House Republican leader John Boehner, noting the critical military and strategic alliance with Turkey, said bringing the resolution to the floor would be "totally irresponsible."
"Let the historians decide what happened 90 years ago," Boehner said in a written statement.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer met with Turkish officials in Pelosi's office Wednesday morning. Hoyer said he and Pelosi informed the officials that they support the resolution.
Hoyer said he told officials that while he considers Turkey a strong ally, "this was about another government at another time."
"I believe that our government's position is clear -- that genocide was perpetrated against the Armenian people approximately 90 years ago and during the course of the First World War. And I believe that remembering that, noting that, is important so that we not paper over or allow the Ahmadinejads of the next decade or decades to deny a fact," Hoyer said.
Schiff, who represents a southern California district with many Armenian-Americans, refers to "the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide."
The term genocide is defined in dictionary.com as "the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group."
But the description is hotly disputed in Turkey, the predominantly Muslim, but modern and secular, pro-Western ally of the United States.
Turks argue that all peoples -- Armenians and Turks -- suffered during the warfare. But Armenians maintain there was an organized genocide by the Ottoman Turkish authorities, and have been campaigning across the world for official recognition of the genocide.
The resolution arrives at a particularly sensitive juncture in U.S.-Turkish relations. The United States has urged Turkey not to send its troops over the border into northern Iraq to fight Kurdish separatist rebels, who have launched some cross-border attacks against Turkish targets.
advertisement
Observers of U.S.-Turkish relations have argued the House resolution could make Turkey less inclined to use restraint in dealing with its longstanding problems with the Kurdistan Workers Party.
"The United States has a compelling historical and moral reason to recognize the Armenian genocide, which cost a million and a half people their lives," Schiff said. "But we also have a powerful contemporary reason as well. How can we take effective action against the genocide in Darfur if we lack the will to condemn genocide whenever and wherever it occurs?"
