Genocide Resolution Scheduled for Congressional Panel Hearing
[ 2010/02/06 | 12:26 ]A U.S. congressional panel will consider a resolution to declare the World War I-era killings of more than a million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks a “genocide”.
On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee announced it had scheduled a debate on the resolution for March 4. The State Department had no immediate comment.
Debate on the bill was proposed by Rep. Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who co-sponsored the legislation. It comes just months after Turkey and Armenia signed a landmark agreement to establish diplomatic relations and open their sealed border after a century of enmity. Led by the Swiss, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton played a pivotal role in brokering the signing of that deal in October.
In April, President Barack Obama came under fire from Armenian-American groups for backtracking on a campaign pledge to declare the killings genocide, on grounds that he did not want to upset the diplomacy that was then under way.
