NEWS FROM THE REAL WORLD

The Genocide Vote: The White House is moving to block a full House vote on a resolution condemning Turkey for the 1915 killings of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians. The resolution, which would officially recognize the Ottoman Empire-era murders as “genocide,” narrowly passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House made the move to pacify Turkey, the only Muslim ally in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a member of the United Nations Security Council. But Armenians were upset that the president was undermining his campaign promise to recognize the killings as “genocide.”

In the tradition of presidents past, Mr. Obama is expected to speak on the killings on April 24, the day the first victims were arrested in 1915. Both Turks and Armenians will be watching to see if he will use the term “genocide.”

read more at the New York Times

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Armenian Genocide, Genocide Denial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.