KEY POINTS:
The Bush administration on Wednesday urged Turkey not to take any "concrete" action after a US congressional committee angered Ankara by passing a resolution calling 1915 massacres of Armenians genocide.
The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee approved the resolution and it will now go to the House floor for passage, a move Nato ally Turkey says will damage ties with Washington.
US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said the administration was "deeply disappointed" by the vote but hoped Turkey, "one of our most valued and important allies worldwide," would not retaliate.
"We hope very much that the disappointment can be limited to statements and not extend to anything concrete that would interfere with the very good way that we have been working with the Turks for many years," he told reporters.
Turkey is of strategic importance to the United States, particularly in Iraq. The bulk of supplies for troops in Iraq pass through Turkey's Incirlik air base.
"We need to continue to be able to work together effectively," said Burns, adding that Turkey had not made any specific threats before the vote over Incirlik or other areas of cooperation between the two countries.
Top officials in the US government, from the president down, tried to convince lawmakers not to pass the resolution while at the same time trying to soothe Turkish fears by making clear if it went through this was not US government policy.
"The administration continues strongly to oppose this resolution, passage of which may do grave harm to US-Turkish relations and to US interests in Europe and the Middle East," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
Eight former secretaries of state wrote to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposing the non-binding resolution and warning it would endanger US national security interests.
Burns said Rice planned to call her Turkish counterpart early on Thursday.
"We will obviously impress upon the Turkish leadership our deep disappointment and the fact that we opposed this resolution and that the administration worked very, very hard to produce a different kind of vote," he said.
Turkey calls the resolution an insult and rejects the Armenian position, backed by many Western historians, that up to 1.5 million Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of Ottoman Turks during World War 1.
Burns said the Bush administration believed there were better ways of handling such an important issue and Turkey had offered to open up its Ottoman archives and have shared historical commissions with the Armenian government.
"It's our belief that that is the better and more productive way forward," he said.
- REUTERS
