Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that passage of the resolution regarding Armenian allegations on the incidents of 1915 will do harm to U.S. and Armenian interests, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported on Friday.
Erdogan made the remarks during his telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice late on Thursday, expressing his regret over the approval of the resolution by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, according to the report.
The report said that Rice called Prime Minister Erdogan on the phone explaining her views about the approval of the resolution.
Rice was quoted as saying that the U.S. administration was deeply disappointed by the vote, adding that they would maintain their efforts resolutely to prevent passage of the resolution by the full House.
Meanwhile, Rice also called Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan to explain her views on the approval of the resolution.
On Thursday, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Levent Bilman announced that Ambassador Nabi Sensoy will return to Turkey and stay in the country for about one week or 10 days for consultations over the U.S. genocide vote.
"We are not withdrawing our ambassador. We have asked him to come to Turkey for consultations," stressed Bilman.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives approved a resolution by 27 votes to 21 votes to label the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as an act of genocide.
The resolution drew immediately Turkish government's condemnation, though it would have no binding effect on the U.S. foreign policy.
"Our government regrets and condemns this decision. It is unacceptable that the Turkish nation has been accused of something that never happened in the past," the Turkish government said in a statement released by the foreign ministry.
"The committee's approval of this resolution was an irresponsible move, which at a greatly sensitive time will make relations with a friend and ally, and a strategic partnership nurtured over generations, more difficult," the Turkish authorities said in the statement.
Armenians say more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a systematic genocide under the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
But Turkey insists the Armenians were victims of widespread chaos and governmental breakdown as the 600-year-old empire collapsed in the years before 1923 when the modern Turkey was founded.
Although the U.S. leadership has warned against the pass of the resolution, the U.S. lawmakers gave their nod to the bill.
U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday urged Congress not to pass the bill, saying that it would do "great harm" to U.S. relations with Turkey, which in Bush's word as "a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror."
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates had also denounced the measure, saying "the passage of this resolution at this time would be very problematic for everything we are trying to do in the Middle East."
Some 70 percent of U.S. air cargo headed for Iraq goes through Turkey's airspace, as does about a third of the fuel used by the U.S. military in Iraq, according to Gates.
Source: Xinhua
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