Turk PM tells Bush genocide bill would harm ties

By Gareth Jones

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's prime minister told President George W. Bush on Friday ties between their countries would suffer if the U.S. Congress passes a bill branding the 1915 mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks "genocide."

The Bush administration opposes a genocide resolution but Congress is dominated by the Democratic Party and, according to Turkish media, its Foreign Relations Committee will take up the issue on October 10.

"(The bill) would harm our strategic relationship...and also damage efforts to develop relations between Turkey and Armenia," the state-run Anatolian news agency quoted Tayyip Erdogan as telling Bush in a telephone call.

Turkey is a key NATO ally of Washington and a moderate Muslim country whose support it needs in the region as it fights Iraqi insurgents and confronts Iran over its nuclear program.

Bush told Erdogan his administration would work "decisively" to prevent the bill passing, the agency said.

Some political analysts say Ankara might consider restricting the U.S. military's use of Incirlik air base, a logistics hub for the Middle East, if Congress passes the bill.

Turkey has already sent several delegations to the United States to try to halt the resolution.

The issue of the Armenian massacres is deeply sensitive in Turkey, where it is a crime to portray them as "genocide."

Ankara acknowledges large numbers of Armenians were killed but says many Muslim Turks also died during fierce inter-ethnic fighting as the Ottoman Empire collapsed during World War One.

Several Turkish writers, including Nobel Literature laureate Orhan Pamuk, have been prosecuted for their comments on the massacres. Turkish Armenian editor Hrant Dink was shot dead by a Turkish ultra-nationalist in January for urging Turks to face up to their historic responsibility for the killings.

The issue was also high on the agenda in talks on in Ankara Friday between the French and Turkish foreign ministers, Bernard Kouchner and Ali Babacan.

Last year, the lower house of the French parliament angered Ankara by passing a bill that would make it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide.

The bill never secured support from the Senate or President Jacques Chirac to become law, but Turkey froze military and other forms of cooperation with France in protest.