Tom Tancredo, a Republican congressman from Colorado and also a candidate for his party's 2008 presidential nomination, withdrew his status as a co-sponsor for the resolutions "without explanation," the Armenian-American Political Action Committee (ARMENPAC) announced on Thursday, suggesting that Tancredo bowed to pressure from the Turkish lobby.
Also on Thursday in Washington, the US State Department reiterated that there was no change in the US administration's position, which is against passage of the resolutions. Remarks by Tom Casey, deputy spokesperson for the State Department, came during a daily press briefing when he was asked to comment on a letter sent by eight former US secretaries of state to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The former secretaries of state -- James Baker, Warren Christopher, Lawrence Eagleburger, Alexander Haig, Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell and George Shultz -- urged Pelosi in their letter to "prevent the resolution from reaching the House."
Casey referred the reporters to the signatories of the letter, and added: "They are private citizens. And I assume if they made representation to Speaker Pelosi on this, they did so because they believed it was the right thing to do." Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reiterated strong opposition to the resolutions in a speech delivered on Thursday at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
"Should this draft reach the floor and the Congress of our ally passes a unilateral, political judgment of no legal bearing on such a sensitive and controversial issue, it will seriously impair Turkish-American relations, with wide-ranging implications in our overall cooperation," Erdoğan said. Ankara Today's Zaman
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