NOMINEE FOR U.S. ENVOY TO ARMENIA REJECTS DEMANDS HE CALL 1915 OTTOMAN ACTION ‘GENOCIDE’
William C. Mann
AP Worldstream
Jun 28, 2006
Senators failed to persuade the nominee for U.S. ambassador to Armenia
to describe the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians last century as
"genocide."
"I have not received any kind of written instruction about this,"
Ambassador-designate Richard E. Hoagland said Wednesday. "I simply
have studied the president’s policy. I’ve studied the background papers
on the policy. And my responsibility is to support the president."
The Bush administration does not question that Turkish troops in the
dying days of the Ottoman Empire killed or drove from their homes
1.5 million Armenians starting in 1915. In a presidential message on
the 91st anniversary April 24, President George W. Bush called it
"a terrible chapter of history" that "remains a source of pain for
people in Armenia and for all those who believe in freedom, tolerance
and the dignity and value of every human life."
As in previous such messages, he omitted using the word "genocide"
to describe what happened.
Turkey strongly objects to the use of the word "genocide" to describe
what happened in 1915. U.S. policymakers are wary of antagonizing an
important strategic NATO ally.
Bush is ordering home the current ambassador in Yerevan, John Evans,
two years into the normal three-year diplomatic term. In announcing
his recall last month, the White House gave no reason and praised
Evans for his service. Last Sunday was his second anniversary in the
Armenian capital.
In February 2005, Evans told Armenian-Americans, "The Armenian genocide
was the first genocide of the 20th century."
Sixty members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice protesting that Evans was being
punished for his reference to "genocide." In a separate letter,
Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy and John Kerry of Massachusetts
demanded an explanation from Rice for Evans’ recall.
Sen. George Allen, a Virginia Republican who presided over Wednesday’s
confirmation hearing for Hoagland before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, recalled remarks made by Adolf Hitler on the eve of World
War II.
Allen referred to an August 1939 meeting between the Nazi leader
and his generals, some of whom protested that the world would not
stand for the slaughter of civilians during the coming war. Allen
paraphrased Hitler: "Who remembers the Armenians"
Another Republican senator, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, told Hoagland
that the State Department was putting him in a difficult position.
"It’s almost absurd to sit here and you can’t utter the word
genocide. The president’s statement that he issues every year is a
description of genocide," Coleman said.
He said former President Ronald Reagan spoke of the Armenian genocide
in an official proclamation in 1981, and even Bush used the word in
2000, when he was governor of Texas and campaigning for president.
"Now we have ambassadors who can’t say, use a word, just a word,"
Coleman said. "But words have meaning. Words have meaning, and it
says to the people, `I understand what you’ve been through.’"
The word "genocide" did not exist in 1915. Its first legal application
was in the indictments of the 1945-46 Nuremberg Tribunal for Nazi
war criminals.
"I fully agree that the events that occurred in 1915 and following
were of historic proportions, as I said, well-documented, horrific,
horrifying," said Hoagland, who is currently the ambassador to
Tajikistan.
He quoted Sen. Paul Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat, who read a
statement about the situation, that "hundreds of valleys (were)
devastated, no family untouched. It was historic. It was a tragedy,
everyone fully agrees with that, sir."
The events occurred during the expulsion of ethnic Armenians from
eastern Turkey into Syria in 1915-16. Turkish officials traditionally
have maintained that 300,000 died.
Whether the Ottoman Turks waged a genocide against the Armenians has
colored relations between the two neighbors for decades, even while
Armenia was a republic of the Soviet Union. Armenian terrorists, mainly
members of the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia,
roamed through Europe and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s
and claimed more than 60 attacks against Turkish targets. The army
claimed the campaign killed 30 Turkish diplomats and dependents.