Wednesday, 24 October 2007
RA Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan's Interview to AP News Agency
Serge Sarkisian said that he has had other issues including economic and security cooperation to discuss with U.S. officials in meetings that began last week. He said that Armenia has tried to stay out of a U.S. political debate.Turkey has lobbied intensively against the resolution, while Armenian-American groups have pressed for its passage.
The resolution did not come up in talks last week with U.S. officials including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Robert Gates or in a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Sarkisian said. After a meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday, the State Department said that the two had discussed a joint economic task force aimed in part at monitoring economic reform in Armenia.
Sarkisian said that he believes that the resolution is being held up in Congress because of Turkish pressure not because there is disagreement in the House of Representatives over whether a genocide took place.
"So there is nothing to discuss," he said in an interview at the Armenian embassy. "We are convinced that the genocide occurred and that the sooner the Turks admit this, the better for both the Armenians and the Turks."
Sarkisian's trip comes at a time that relations between Washington and Ankara have reached a recent low, as Turkey has protested the congressional foray into a sensitive historical matter.
At issue is the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, which many genocide scholars consider the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, contending the toll has been inflated, and those killed were victims of civil war and unrest that killed Muslims as well as the overwhelmingly Christian Armenians.
The resolution was approved by a House committee earlier this month, but appears stalled by an erosion of support. Some lawmakers have removed their names from the sponsorship of the measure amid concern that Turkey could retaliate by cutting off important supply routes to Iraq or by withdrawing lucrative business deals.
Turkey has also said that passage of the resolution would undermine hopes of improving relations with Armenia. Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 during a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, a Muslim ally of Ankara. The countries currently have no diplomatic relations.
"I don't understand what the Turks are saying," Sarkisian said. "We have no relations now. We cannot harm something that is non existent."
But Sarkisian said that resolving the historical dispute over the killings of Armenians should not hold up efforts to restore relations.
"It is not a precondition for re-establishing relations between the two states," he said.
He said that he expected to discuss with Rice efforts to resolve the conflict with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. The area been controlled by Armenian and ethnic Armenian forces since a shaky 1994 cease-fire ended one of the bloodiest conflicts that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.
