Turkish Daily News , Turkey
Jan 12 2007
Diplomacy Newsline –
Menendez again blocks nomination of envoy to Armenia:
ANK – TDN with AP
Democratic senator Robert Menendez, a key backer of the Armenian
cause in the U.S. Senate, on Wednesday again blocked the nomination
of a career diplomat to be U.S. ambassador to Armenia and urged the
Bush administration to submit another candidate.
Sen. Menendez placed a hold on the nomination of Richard Hoagland
for the second time because of Hoagland’s refusal to call the World
War I-era killings of Anatolian Armenians during the Ottoman Empire
era genocide.
A hold on nominations is a parliamentary privilege accorded to U.S.
senators.
Menendez has said: `the State Department and the Bush
administration are just flat-out wrong in their refusal to recognize
the Armenian genocide. It is well past time to drop the euphemisms,
the wink-wink, nod-nod brand of foreign diplomacy that overlooks
heinous atrocities around the world.’
Hoagland’s predecessor, John Evans, reportedly had his tour of duty
as ambassador to Armenia cut short because, in a social setting, he
referred to the killings as genocide. Menendez blocked Hoagland’s
nomination after he refused to use the word genocide at his
confirmation hearing in June.
The Bush administration resubmitted Hoagland’s name on Tuesday
because it effectively expired at the end of the previous Congress in
December.