A US congressional panel will consider a resolution to declare the World War I-era killings of more than a million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks a genocide.
TheUS House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on Fridayannounced it had scheduled a debate on the resolution for March 4. TheState Department had no immediate comment.
The issue has thepotential to raise US tensions with Turkey, which has lobbiedintensively against past attempts to pass the resolution, while theArmenian-American Diaspora groups have pressed for its passage.
Historians estimate that 1.5 million Armenianswere killed by Ottoman Turks in 1915. The event is widely viewed byscholars as the first genocide of the 20th century, but Turkey insiststhe death toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims ofcivil war and unrest.