AP News, March 21st, 2007
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday the U.S. should not be involved in a dispute between Turkey and Armenia over whether the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians almost a century ago constituted genocide.
Under questioning the sponsor of a House resolution that would declare that Turkey's Ottoman predecessor state committed genocide, Rice avoided answering whether she believed there was any basis for historical debate on the matter.
"What we've encouraged the Turks and the Armenians to do is to have joint historical commissions that can look at this, to have efforts to examine their past, and in examining their past to get over it," she told House Appropriations subcommittee.
"I don't think it helps that process of reconciliation for the United States to enter this debate at that level."
The dispute involves the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians during the waning years of the Ottoman Empire. Armenian advocates, backed by many historians, contend the Armenians died in an organized genocide. The Turks say the Armenians were victims of widespread chaos and governmental breakdown as the 600-year-old empire collapsed in the years before Turkey was born in 1923.
"Madame Secretary, your comments that there should be some kind of debate or discussion about the genocide suggests that you have a question about whether genocide occurred," said the resolution's sponsor, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
The Bush administration, which has heard threats from top Turkish officials that passage of Schiff's resolution would damage relations, has been trying to quash it.
"I believe that this is something that the Turks and Armenians are best to address," Rice told Schiff at the hearing on the State Department's spending for foreign operations.
