House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that she'd bring to a vote a resolution condemning the mass killings of Armenians in Turkey nearly a century ago as genocide, despite warnings that the action could damage U.S.-Turkey relations.
On Wednesday, a House committee OK'd a nonbinding resolution declaring the killings as genocide. Appearing Sunday on "This Week," Pelosi states: “I’ve said if it passed the committee that we would bring it to the floor.”
About 1.5 million Armenians were killed, starting in 1915, as the Ottoman Empire crumbled. The current Turkish government objects to the word "genocide." It insists that while hundreds of thousands of Armenians died, they died as a result of war.
When asked Sunday if forcing a vote on the resolution might endangers U.S. troops in Iraq, Pelosi said:
“Some of the things that are harmful to our troops relate to values — Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture. Our troops are well-served when we declare who we are as a country and increase the respect people have for us as a nation.”
She also pointed out that President Reagan referred to the killings as genocide.
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