Turkish-U.S. Business Council cancelled a scheduled conference on "Turkey Beyond 2008" to protest against the approval of a resolution on Armenian allegations by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, an official statement said on Sunday.
Turkey's Foreign Economic Relations Board (DEIK) said in a statement that the conference, which was planned to be held in New York on October 16, was cancelled, adding that Turkish State Minister Kursad Tuzmen also cancelled his trip to United States on Saturday.
Tuzmen said he deemed appropriate to cancel his trip because recent developments showed that some circles wanted to discredit Turkey's rightful struggle.
On Wednesday, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs approved a resolution labeling the killings of Armenians between 1915 and 1917 a genocide.
The resolution drew immediately Turkish government's condemnation, though it would have no binding effect on the U.S. foreign policy.
Armenians say more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a systematic genocide in the hands of the Ottomans during World War I, before modern Turkey was born in 1923.
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.
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 heading 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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