Philip J. Crowley, Assistant Secretary to the Bureau of Public Affairs answered journalists’ questions at the daily briefing, March 4 before the Genocide resolution hearing in the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Asked by the journalist who held the information that Secretary Hillary Clinton called Chairman Howard Berman to urge him to not vote on the Armenian Genocide Resolution right now, as it could hurt the Turkey-Armenia talks but he voted regardless, U.S. Assistant Secretary Philip Crowley replied: “Secretary Clinton did call Chairman Berman yesterday, and in that conversation, she indicated that further congressional action could impede progress on normalization of relations. I think the President also spoke yesterday with President Gul and expressed appreciation for his and Prime Minister Erdogan’s efforts to normalize relations between Turkey and Armenia. And in that call, I think he continued to press for rapid ratification of the protocols that have been worked out between the two countries.”

In response to the question that Administration asked Congress not to go ahead with the resolution voting, but the committee did so, and whether this will damage U.S.-Turkish relations, he replied: “Well, I mean, we’ve worked very hard to assist Turkey and Armenia. As the President has made clear, it – we promote a free – a fair, frank, and just acknowledgement of the facts related to the historical events of 1915. We are concerned that possible action that Congress would take would impede the positive momentum that we see in the Turkey-Armenia normalization process. We’ve made that position clear to Chairman Berman, and we’ll see what Congress does as a result.”

Asked to comment on U.S.-Turkey relations having the voting shortly and can it be ignoring of his pleas for political means, Crowley parried: “Well, let’s see what happens in Congress and then let’s see how Turkey reacts to it. We have had very specific conversations with Congress. There – I think they have a firm understanding of our views on this issue. We have also talked to Turkey. The Secretary had a meeting with Prime Minister Erdogan in Doha a couple of weeks ago. So this is obviously something that has come up before, and we are concerned about its potential impact on our relations with the affected countries. We do think that the normalization process is the proper mechanism within which to address these issues, and we will continue to work very, very hard on this. We’ve had – this has been a very, very significant issue for the Obama Administration since coming to office. We’ve had a lot of high-level meetings with Turkey and Armenia on these issues. We’ve pressed hard to see the progress that we’ve seen to date, and we certainly do not want to see that jeopardized,” he concluded.