U.S. Congress To Mull New Armenian Genocide Bill

Buoyed by the Democratic takeover of the U.S. Congress, pro-Armenian members of the House of Representatives will re-introduce this month a draft resolution recognizing the World War I-era killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as genocide. Their Armenian-American backers are confident that the new House leadership will not seek to block the bill which is certain to anger Turkey and prompt strong objections from the administration of President George W. Bush. Its language is expected to be virtually identical with that of two resolutions that were overwhelmingly approved by the House International Relations Committee in September 2005. Their passage by the full House was subsequently thwarted by the White House and leaders of the then Republican majority in Congress. One of those resolutions was co-sponsored by 140 lawmakers and called on Bush to “accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide.”