ANKARA, 25 Nov (AFP) - A leading lawmaker from Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Thursday accused the United States of committing "genocide" in the Iraqi rebel stronghold of Fallujah.
"The US is committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Iraq," the Anatolia news agency quoted Mehmet Elkatmis, who chairs the parliament's human rights commission, as saying.
Elkatmis called on Washington to end the "massacres and the barbarity" in Fallujah, which has been the target since November 8 of the biggest US military operation since the proclaimed end of the war in Iraq.
Citing recent TV footage of a US Marine gunning down what appeared to be a wounded, unarmed Iraqi in a Fallujah mosque, Elkatmis said "genocide of such proportions was committed neither under Mussolini, nor Hitler," referring to the World War II dictators of, respectively, fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
Speaking before an extraordinary session of his commission, called to discuss the situation Iraq, the deputy wondered whether US forces had not "used the atom bomb" there.
"They may have used this weapon," he said, "because we are told that hundreds of thousands of people have died in Iraq."
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's AKP is a conservative party that has its roots in a now-banned Islamist movement in this Muslim-majority but secular country, whose parliament last year voted against allowing US use of its territory to open a northern front in the war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Public opinion surveys regularly show that an overwhelming majority of the Turkish population is opposed to the US presence in Iraq, which borders Turkey to the south.
11/25/2004 11:51 GMT - AFP