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Protest Isn't Halting House Resolution

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By ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON, The Washington Post

Published: October 11, 2007

WASHINGTON - A House panel voted Wednesday to approve calling the mass killings of Armenians that began in 1915 genocide, defying the White House, which warned that the measure would damage U.S.-Turkey relations.

The Foreign Affairs Committee passed the nonbinding resolution on a 27-21 bipartisan vote. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has promised she will bring the resolution to the full House for a vote.

Turkey, one of Washington's staunchest Islamic allies, lobbied hard to kill the measure, launching a multimillion-dollar campaign and threatening to curtail its cooperation in the Iraq war.

President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates were joined by eight former secretaries of state and three former defense secretaries in condemning the proposal.

'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,' Bush said Wednesday in the White House Rose Garden.

The committee's chairman, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said, however, 'We have to weigh the desire to express our solidarity with the Armenian people ... against the risk that it could cause young men and women in the uniform of the United States armed services to pay an even heavier price.'

Lantos supported the measure, as did most lawmakers from California, whose large and influential Armenian-American community has pursued similar proposals for decades.

Nabi Sensoy, Turkey's ambassador to the United States, sat in the second row of the hearing room, flanked by a delegation of Turkish parliamentarians.

He said Ankara would continue its fight against the resolution, thinking it would lead to requests for massive monetary compensation by Armenian survivors.

'Why is Armenia not taking this to an international court? They are trying to win this on political grounds, and they will never let go,' he said.

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