US lawmakers defied strident warnings by President George W. Bush by voting Wednesday to label the Ottoman Empire's World War I massacre of Armenians as "genocide" sparking condemnation from Turkey.
To cheers and applause from emotional Armenians, including elderly wheelchair-bound survivors, the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee voted for the resolution by 27 votes to 21.
A Turkish government statement Thursday said the "irresponsible" resolution was likely to endanger bilateral relations.
"We still hope that the House of Representatives will have enough good sense not to take this resolution further," said the statement.
To do so, it added, would jeopardise a strategic partnership with an ally and friend and would be an "irresponsible attitude", it added.
"It is unacceptable that the Turkish nation should be accused of a crime that it never committed in its history."
The US State Department on Wednesday also expressed regret at the vote and said it hoped the move would not interfere with relations with Turkey.
"We regret that the House Foreign Affairs Committee has approved House Resolution 106," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement.
"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," McCormack said.
Assistant Secretary of State Nick Burns said the department was communicating to Turkey its unhappiness with the vote and its desire to keep working closely with Ankara.
He said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will call the Turkish leadership Thursday to explain the US position.
"We will obviously impress upon the Turkish leadership our deep disappointment, the fact that we opposed this resolution," Burns said.
He said he hoped Turkey would not respond with damaging countermeasures.
"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 so many years."
Bush and top lieutenants earlier were unusually blunt in attacking the non-binding resolution, warning that it would trigger Turkish reprisals and undermine US efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East.
The measure is likely to be sent on to a vote in the full Democratic-led House, where a majority has already signed on to the resolution. A parallel measure is in the Senate pipeline.
Bryan Ardouny, executive director of the Armenian Assembly of America, lauded "a historic day" after the committee's vote.
"It is long past time for the US government to acknowledge and affirm this horrible chapter of history -- the first genocide of the 20th century and a part of history that we must never forget," he said.
The text says the killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians was a "genocide" that should be acknowledged fully in US foreign policy towards Turkey, along with "the consequences of the failure to realize a just resolution."
While the American-Armenian community celebrated, Turkish President Abdullah Gul denounced the vote as "unacceptable" and accused the House members of sacrificing US interests to "petty games of domestic politics."
Turkey's ambassador to Washington, Nabi Sensoy, told AFP the vote was "very disappointing" and called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to refrain from bringing it to a full vote.
Sensoy, who has personally lobbied more than 100 House members against the resolution, added that "those who said it won't do any harm, we will have to wait and see."
Bush said the resolution would do "great harm" to ties with Turkey, a Muslim-majority member of NATO whose territory is a crucial transit point for US supplies bound for Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to the Armenians, 1.5 million of their kinsmen were killed from 1915 to 1923 under an Ottoman Empire campaign of deportation and murder that later encouraged Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's Holocaust against the Jews.
Rejecting the genocide label, Turkey argues that 250,000 to 500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia during the war.
Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates also denounced the measure before the hearing, after veiled threats from Ankara that US access to a sprawling air base in southern Turkey could be denied.
But despite the warnings, the resolution's backers warned the issue could not be ignored as they drew parallels to the Holocaust and the present-day bloodshed in the Sudanese region of Darfur.
"We've been told the timing is bad," Democratic House member Gary Ackerman said in an emotional hearing that lasted nearly four hours. "But the timing was bad for the Armenian people in 1915."
Republican lawmaker Dan Burton, however, said passage of the genocide resolution could endanger US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"We're in the middle of two wars. We have troops out there who are at risk. And we're talking about kicking an ally in the teeth. It is crazy."
