PRO-ARMENIAN CONGRESSMEN PRESSURE HILLARY CLINTON INTO RETRACTING HER STATEMENT ON RECENT FRENCH LEGISLATIVE BILL
APA
Feb 17 2012
Azerbaijan
Recently, the Armenian-American special interest groups have launched
a campaign, led by Congressmen Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Robert Dold, Jr.
(R-IL), to pressure the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, into
retracting her statement on the recent French legislative bill
criminalizing the denial of the so-called “Armenian genocide”.
APA reported that in their part, the Azerbaijani Americans urge their
representatives not to co-sign the “Schiff-Dold” letter and to defend
Secretary Clinton’s just position on freedom of expression and against
legislating history.
“Commenting on this legislation, withheld for review by France’s
Constitutional Council after clearing both chambers of the French
Parliament, Secretary Clinton accurately indicated that the law was
compromising free speech and that the issue is a matter of historical
debate by scholars”, say the Azeri Diaspora members in their letters
to the elected officials.
“Furthermore, according to a renowned expert of the Ottoman history,
Professor Bernard Lewis of Princeton University, there was no
“deliberate preconceived decision of the Ottoman government” to
eliminate Armenians and the claim that the inter-communal warfare
atrocities were a genocide constitutes only “the Armenian version
of the history”. Besides Armenians, over 518,000 Turkish civilians
were massacred during World War I by the paramilitaries of Armenian
Revolutionary Federation supported by invading Russian forces
in Eastern Anatolia. So, Secretary Clinton’s assertion that the
allegations of the so-called “Armenian genocide” are a matter of
historical debate by scholars is absolutely correct”, read the letters.
From: A. Papazian