Bush tells Turkey he opposes Armenia genocide measure

President George W Bush reassured Turkey's
prime minister Friday that he opposes efforts by US lawmakers to
denounce the Ottoman Empire's killings of Armenians as genocide, the
White House said Friday.
Bush's phone talk with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan came as
a US House of Representatives panel prepared to vote on a resolution
on the deaths of as many as 1.5 million Armenians from 1915 to 1923, DPA reported.
Turkey vehemently rejects the genocide label and fights efforts by
other countries to apply it. The Bush administration fears that the
resolution would anger a key ally in NATO whose support is critical
for stabilizing neighbouring Iraq.