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ISTANBUL, March 30 (AFP) - 17h52 - The United
States will help ease tensions with Turkey if it
sticks to its stance of not recognizing the killings
of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire as genocide,
Anatolia news agency quoted a senior Turkish
official as saying Wednesday.
Turkey expects Washington "to maintain the sound
position on the issue it has displayed in the past
as a first step... (towards) leaving current
disturbances behind so that Turkish-US ties can
progress on a healthy basis," the head of the
National Security Council, Yigit Alpogan, said.
"We believe the American administration will not
give the green light to slanders which render all
Turks as children of murderers," Alpogan told a
gathering of a Turkish-American business group.
Washington has so far refrained from terming the
World War I massacres as genocide despite pressure
from pro-Armenian lobbies.
On April 24 Armenians will mark the 90th anniversary
of the beginning of the controversial massacres.
Ankara is concerned that the Armenians will this
year step up their campaign to have the events
acknowledged as genocide by Washington at a time
when Turkish-US relations are markedly strained by
differences over Iraq.
US President George W. Bush last year described the
massacres as "one of the most horrible tragedies of
the 20th century."
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen
perished in orchestrated killings and deportations
between 1915 and 1917.
Turkey categorically rejects allegations of
genocide, saying that 300,000 Armenians and
thousands of Turks were killed in what was a civil
strife during World War I when the Armenians rose up
against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading
Russian troops.
In October 2000, a draft congressional resolution
acknowledging the killings as genocide was pulled
from the House floor following an intervention by
then president Bill Clinton, who argued that the
United State not damage its ties with Turkey, a key
Muslim ally.
Since then, however, those ties have deteriorated.
The Turkish parliament stunned Washington just
before the occupation of Iraq in March 2003 when it
denied US troops access to Turkish territory for a
planned invasion of Iraq from the north.
Relations between the two NATO allies were further
strained by US reluctance to take military action
against Turkish Kurd rebels in northern Iraq and
Ankara's concern that Iraqi Kurds are getting too
much power in post-war Iraq.
AFP
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