AMBASSADOR-TO-BE DODGES ARMENIAN GENOCIDE QUESTION
By Michael Doyle
McClatchy Newspapers
Scripps Howard News Service, DC
June 29 2006
WASHINGTON — America’s next ambassador to Armenia is a verbal
gymnast. He has to be, to keep his job.
On Wednesday, career Foreign Service officer Richard E. Hoagland
tread prudently through his confirmation hearing.
He picked his way around the word "genocide" in describing the
mass slaughter of Armenians between 1915 and 1923. The events were
"horrific" and "well-documented" and "historic," Hoagland told the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but the genocide word did not
cross his lips.
"It’s a tragedy; everybody agrees with that," Hoagland said, but
"instead of getting stuck in the past and vocabulary, I would like
to see what we can do to bring different sides together."
While the highly decorated Hoagland appears a shoo-in for the Armenia
post, his reticence did not sit well with the three senators who
showed up for his confirmation hearing.
"It’s almost absurd to sit here, and you can’t utter the word
‘genocide,’ " said Republican Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota. "We
have ambassadors who can’t use a word, just a word."
In regions like the California’s San Joaquin Valley, southern
California, New Jersey and Michigan, well-established Armenian-American
populations maintain both a tangible and symbolic stake in U.S.-Armenia
relations.
"The local community follows with great interest events in Armenia
and also U.S. government policy," noted Barlow Der Mugrdechian,
lecturer in Armenian Studies at California State University at Fresno.
In particular, Der Mugrdechian said, activists have been tracking
the fate of Hoagland’s predecessor, Ambassador John Evans. The
Yale-educated Evans ran afoul of his State Department superiors when
he acknowledged the accuracy of the phrase "Armenian genocide."
"I informed myself in depth about it," Evans told an Armenian-American
audience in Berkeley, Calif., in February 2005. "I think we, the
U.S. government, owe you, our fellow citizens, a more frank and honest
way of discussing this problem. I think it is unbecoming of us, as
Americans, to play word games here. I believe in calling things by
their name."
That was contrary to the Bush administration’s policy of avoiding
the term, out of deference to Turkey’s sensibilities. Within a week,
the State Department issued a statement from Evans in which he called
his remarks "inappropriate" and said he "deeply" regretted them.
State Department officials have declined to characterize Evans as
having been fired, but his Armenian tenure was clearly cut short. He
became ambassador in September 2004, and Hoagland was announced as
his replacement in May 2006. By contrast, his predecessors served
three-year terms.
Hoagland previously served as U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan. He has
considerable experience with some dicey parts of the world, including
service as the lead Afghanistan analyst with the State Department’s
Bureau of Intelligence and Research. While in Pakistan in the late
1980s, he worked with the Afghan resistance.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
