October 11, 2007 - Earlier on Wednesday, Bush, along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged lawmakers to reject the resolution, warning that it would create unnecessary headaches for U.S. relations with Turkey.

Rice said the resolution would be "very problematic for everything that we're trying to do in the Middle East because we are very dependent on a good Turkish strategic ally to help with our efforts."

Bush said that although the U.S. regretted the mass killings of Armenians, the resolution was "not the right response."

Speaking afterwards, U.S. Undersecretary of State Nick Burns told reporters that Rice would call the Turkish leadership Thursday to express the administration's "deep disappointment" over the vote.

"We want to convey to the Turkish people and the Turkish government a message of respect and a message of support for them and the hope we can continue to work together with them," Burns said.

Democratic representatives said they intended to bring the resolution to the House floor for a full vote. Adam Schiff, the resolution's sponsor, said the U.S. had a "compelling historical and moral reason" to recognize the mass killing of Armenians as genocide.

But House Minority Leader John Boehner said jeopardizing the U.S. military and strategic alliance with Turkey would be "totally irresponsible."
"Let the historians decide what happened 90 years ago," he added.

The resolution says that the deportation of nearly two million Armenians from the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1923, resulting in the deaths of 1.5 million of them, was "systematic" and "deliberate," amounting to "genocide."

The Armenian government and Armenians around the world, including many Armenian-Americans, have been pressing for international recognition of their contention that their people were the victims of genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks.

Armenian President Robert Kocharian welcomed the resolution on Thursday, AP reported, saying: "We hope this process will lead to a full recognition by the United States of America ... of the genocide."

Last year France voted to make it a crime to deny that the killings constituted genocide, causing the Turkish government to cut its military ties with the country.