The administration of US President Barack Obama on Friday sought to limit fallout from a US resolution branding the World War I-era massacre of Armenians by Turkish forces as “genocide” and vowed to stop it from going further in Congress.
Turkey was infuriated and recalled its ambassador after a US House of Representatives committee on Thursday approved the nonbinding measure condemning killings that took place nearly 100 years ago, in the last days of the Ottoman Empire.
A Democratic leadership aide said there were no plans “at this point” to schedule a vote of the full House on the measure and a US State Department official said this was the administration’s understanding as well.
“We believe it will stop where it is now,” the State Department official said as the Obama administration sought to limit damage to relations with Turkey, a NATO ally crucial to US interests in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and the Middle East.
The resolution squeaked through the House Foreign Affairs Committee 23-22 on Thursday despite a last-minute appeal against it from the Obama administration.
The issue puts Obama between Turkey, a secular Muslim democracy that looks toward the West, and Armenian-Americans, an important constituency in states like California and New Jersey, ahead of the November congressional elections.
Similar resolutions have been introduced in many past sessions of Congress, but have never passed both the House and the Senate. In 2007, the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed such a resolution, but it lost momentum and never came up on the floor after then-US president George W. Bush weighed in strongly against it.
After the committee’s vote on Thursday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan warned of possible damage to ties with the US.
On Friday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said chances of Turkey’s parliament ratifying peace protocols with Christian Armenia were jeopardized by the vote on the 1915 massacres.
“The Obama administration strongly opposes the resolution that was passed by only one vote in the House committee and will work very hard to make sure it does not go to the House floor,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Guatemala City.
Muslim Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks, but denies that up to 1.5 million died and that it amounted to genocide — a term employed by many Western historians and some foreign parliaments.
The US envoy in Ankara, James Jeffrey, distanced the Obama administration from the panel’s vote after being invited for talks by Turkish officials.
“We believe that Congress should not make a decision on the issue. We are against new action,” he said.
There was also anger in Baku, Azerbaijan, a close Muslim and Turkic-speaking ally of Turkey. Its parliament warned that the US resolution could “reduce to zero all previous efforts” to resolve a long-standing conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
BACK IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD: The planned transit by the ‘Baden-Wuerttemberg’ and the ‘Frankfurt am Main’ would be the German Navy’s first passage since 2002 Two German warships are set to pass through the Taiwan Strait in the middle of this month, becoming the first German naval vessels to do so in 22 years, Der Spiegel reported on Saturday. Reuters last month reported that the warships, the frigate Baden-Wuerttemberg and the replenishment ship Frankfurt am Main, were awaiting orders from Berlin to sail the Strait, prompting a rebuke to Germany from Beijing. Der Spiegel cited unspecified sources as saying Beijing would not be formally notified of the German ships’ passage to emphasize that Berlin views the trip as normal. The German Federal Ministry of Defense declined to comment. While
‘UPHOLDING PEACE’: Taiwan’s foreign minister thanked the US Congress for using a ‘creative and effective way’ to deter Chinese military aggression toward the nation The US House of Representatives on Monday passed the Taiwan Conflict Deterrence Act, aimed at deterring Chinese aggression toward Taiwan by threatening to publish information about Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials’ “illicit” financial assets if Beijing were to attack. The act would also “restrict financial services for certain immediate family of such officials,” the text of the legislation says. The bill was introduced in January last year by US representatives French Hill and Brad Sherman. After remarks from several members, it passed unanimously. “If China chooses to attack the free people of Taiwan, [the bill] requires the Treasury secretary to publish the illicit
A senior US military official yesterday warned his Chinese counterpart against Beijing’s “dangerous” moves in the South China Sea during the first talks of their kind between the commanders. Washington and Beijing remain at odds on issues from trade to the status of Taiwan and China’s increasingly assertive approach in disputed maritime regions, but they have sought to re-establish regular military-to-military talks in a bid to prevent flashpoint disputes from spinning out of control. Samuel Paparo, commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, and Wu Yanan (吳亞男), head of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Southern Theater Command, talked via videoconference. Paparo “underscored the importance
CHINA POLICY: At the seventh US-EU Dialogue on China, the two sides issued strong support for Taiwan and condemned China’s actions in the South China Sea The US and EU issued a joint statement on Wednesday supporting Taiwan’s international participation, notably omitting the “one China” policy in a departure from previous similar statements, following high-level talks on China and the Indo-Pacific region. The statement also urged China to show restraint in the Taiwan Strait. US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and European External Action Service Secretary-General Stefano Sannino cochaired the seventh US-EU Dialogue on China and the sixth US-EU Indo-Pacific Consultations from Monday to Tuesday. Since the Indo-Pacific consultations were launched in 2021, references to the “one China” policy have appeared in every statement apart from the