Author: Chakrian Hovsep

Cincinnati Post, OH
Oct 19 2007

Armenian controversy unleashes opinions

It was my intention to write my monthly "letters" column today, but
that will have to wait until Monday.

This will, indeed, be a column about letters, but only on one
subject. My piece about the crisis of conscience in the halls of
Congress over declaring the massacre of Armenians 90 years ago a
"genocide" has sparked an avalanche of mail. Much – but not all – of
the mail in support of the resolution came from those whose names
indicate Armenian descent. There are also letters supporting the
opposite position. Here is a sampling:

"You’ll certainly get some response about the numbers murdered;
historians, in fact, put that number at 1.5 million. Nevertheless, a
clear-cut piece." -Maral Habeshian

"Both my grandparents, uncles and many other relatives perished in
the genocide at the hands of the Turks and the Kurds. The Kurds
recognize the fact and apologized many times already. Now, maybe the
time has come for the Turks to do the same." -Sarhadian

"The atrocity should be formally recognized no matter what the
political cost if the U.S. truly wants to take a stand for freedom."
-Catherine Fuller

"Many today say ‘it happened so long ago’ or, ‘it was a different
Turkish government.’ All true, but one can make the same argument for
the Holocaust…. And for the ‘practical’ argument, there was no
Armenian resolution in 2003 when Turkey prevented U.S. (access) to
Iraq across its territory, so I would question the argument of a
‘loyal NATO ally.’ " -Harout Topsacalian

"While I certainly do not want to put our country and our troops in
peril, I think the time is now to speak the truth and in the process
find out who our friends really are." -Ardag Tachian

"Those who perished in what is also known as the Asia Minor genocide
(Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians and others) thank you from the grave.
-Lucine Kasbarian, author

On the other hand, this from Mark Stegeman, associate professor of
economics at the University of Arizona: "Historians have already
spoken, so what new research or insight does Congress add to the
issue? Will our Congressional historians now pass resolutions
condemning numerous other genocides, including the far greater one in
Ukraine in the 1930s, or what could be considered the genocide of
Native Americans in our own country? …

"The job of the Foreign Affairs Committee (one supposes) is to try to
protect U.S. security interests rather than become the rhetorical
tool of every interest group that has a historical ax to grind….
The courageous members of Congress are those who are standing up to a
tiny but energetic Armenian-American minority who have, like many in
the Cuban-American community, long sought to hijack the U.S. foreign
policy apparatus to settle an old score."

And this from Ruthie Carniz: "I am an American woman living in
Turkey. I have close ties with the Turkish community and the Armenian
community here in Istanbul…. To name these events ‘genocide’ is
simply wrong. To give this label to the people of a nation for events
which were admittedly tragic, but which occurred almost 100 years ago
and which occurred prior to the current Republic, is not fair….
Unfortunately, the U.S. does not seem to value its friends, as the
Turkish people have been our friends for centuries…. We have always
been friends."

Reasonable people can disagree reasonably. Professor Stegeman’s
argument is cogent, but overlooks the fact that Congress has often
taken note of national and international errors, from the forced
resettlement of Japanese Americans, to the Holocaust, to Darfur and
others, not always bowing "to every interest group with an ax to
grind."

Ms. Carniz’s letter is personal and heartfelt, but Turkey and the
U.S. have not always been friends. In World War I, we were on
opposite sides and in World War II, Turkey was declared a "hostile
neutral." Fortunately for both sides, we have been friends since
then. Still, if you read the U.N. definition of genocide, Armenia
qualifies. This country should not be in the business of denying the
truth, no matter what short-term advantage we derive.

Nick Clooney writes for The Post every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
E-mails sent to Nick at [email protected] will be forwarded
to him via regular mail.

icle?AID=/20071019/LIFE03/710190340/1008/LIFE

Newsroom Finland, Finland
Oct 19 2007

Armenian president to visit Finland

19.10.2007 at 16:10

Robert Kocharian, the president of Armenia, is to make an official
visit to Finland on 5-7 November, the office of the Finnish
president, Tarja Halonen, said in a statement Friday.

The official ceremonies and talks between the heads of state are to
take place at the Presidential Palace on the second day of the visit.

President Kocharian will also meet Matti Vanhanen (centre), the prime
minister, visit Parliament and give a lecture at the Aleksanteri
Institute in Helsinki.

On the third day, President Kocharian is to visit the Mannerheim
museum and meet business representatives.

WorldNetDaily, OR
Oct 19 2007

Bush betrays the Kurds

Posted: October 19, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Turkish "lawmakers voted 507 to 19 to give Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan permission to order strategic strikes or large-scale
invasions of Iraq for a one-year period," the Washington Post
reported.

The Turkish government’s ruse for war-making is the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party. The PKK are separatist rebels who’ve waged a
decades-old campaign of terror against Turkey. Essentially, Turkey is
threatening to visit on Iraqi Kurdistan what Israel had no right to
inflict on Lebanon: Level the country and kill hundreds of innocent
civilians for the actions of a few militants acting in defiance of
the central government.

But why now? Why would Turkey disturb the détente, and threaten to
destabilize the only stable region in Iraq?

The Turks are cross with Congress, which had planned on scheduling a
vote to recognize as genocide the mass murder of 1.5 million
Armenians by the Ottoman Turks a century ago. Contemporary Turkey is
to Armenians as the Institute for Historical Review is to Jews:
Holocaust deniers. Even though support for the symbolic vote has
waned in Washington, Ankara has recalled its ambassador and seized
the opportunity to do what it’s clearly been itching to do since the
Iraqi Kurds gained autonomy: cut them down to size. For some time
now, Turkey has also been shelling Southern Kurdistan.

Iraqi Kurds have cause for concern. The Armenians are not the only
ethnic group to have suffered at the hands of the Turks. Turkey has
waged systematic ethnocide against its Kurdish population as well.
Although it has lifted bans on speaking Kurdish and wearing the
traditional garb, Turkey still prohibits other forms of cultural
expression by Turkish Kurds.

The Turks are not the only power to use and abuse the Kurds. Many a
creative post hoc argument has been concocted to justify the
unnecessary war the United States waged on a sovereign nation that
had not attacked us, was no threat to us and was certainly no match
for us.

One such argument for the invasion of Iraq utilized the Kurds.
Flaunting sham sympathies, unapologetic war apologists resurrected,
in 2003, the Halabja massacre of 1988, during which "Chemical Ali,"
then governor of Northern Iraq, released lethal gases on a Kurdish
town. Over 5,000 men, women and children perished.

The hell Hussein unleashed on Halabja formed part of the genocidal
Anfal campaign he initiated against the Kurds. Aside from convicting
the Kurds for supporting Iran in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Hussein
coveted the oil-rich land around Kirkuk occupied by the Kurds. The
area is crucial to the Iraqi economy. The Kurds, moreover, are a
non-Arabic, if Muslim, people. To an Arab, that’s almost as
incriminating as being an infidel. Ask the decidedly non-Halal
victims of the Janjaweed in Darfur about Arab chauvinism! Over a
100,000 Kurds lost their lives during the Anfal onslaught, as Saddam
razed hamlets, slaughtered their inhabitants and scattered the
survivors throughout Iraq.

Bush boosters now habitually use the fate of the Kurds, in 1988, as
an excuse for their illegitimate 2003 invasion of Iraq. But back when
images of Kurdish corpses on the streets of Halabja reached the West,
the U.S. opted to sit on the sidelines. Worse still: The U.S.
succored Saddam at his most monstrous, providing him with chemical
and biological precursors, pesticides and poisonous compounds to
carry out his deeds.

Before Halabja, the U.S. had abandoned the Kurds to Iraq’s mercies in
a 1975 covert operation involving Iran. After Halabja, the U.S.
forsook the Kurds in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The Kurdish militia,
the brave Peshmergas, rose up against the Baath government, only to
be jilted by George the First.

The Kurds are the only sect in Iraq that has been consistently loyal
to America – the Peshmergas assisted American forces in the north
during the invasion. Not one American soldier has been killed in that
region. Kurds are also the only group to have made good on their
newly found freedom. Monocultural Iraqi Kurdistan is an oasis in the
democratic desert that is Iraq, "where business is booming and
Americans are beloved."

"When visiting Kurdistan," enthused CBS’s "60 Minutes," "one can see
nation-building wherever one looks – Kurds are building their country
day by day. There are more cranes here than minarets, and there’s a
run on cement." No wonder the constructive Kurds want nothing to do
with the destructive Iraqi Arabs, who’ve persecuted them in years
past and have now turned on one another.

The Prince of Darkness, aka Robert Novak, has divulged that Bush
authorized "a covert operation of U.S. Special Forces to help the
Turks neutralize the PKK." The King of Darkness may be planning to
sell the Kurds down the Tigress to pacify the Turks.

E_ID=58222

US CONGRESS BACKS OFF FROM GENOCIDE VOTE

Times Online
October 17, 2007

(AFP/Getty Images)
The skulls and corpses of Armenian victims of Turkish deportation –
1.75 million were sent to Syria and Palestine, and 600,000 were killed
or starved Image :1 of 7

Jenny Booth and agencies
The United States Congress is backing off from its controversial plan
to pass a resolution condemning the mass killing of Armenians in 1915
as genocide.

The measure has caused outrage in Turkey – accused of responsibility
for the killings – and has proved an extra irritant at a time of high
tension between Turkey and the US over Iraq.

Turkey is today preparing to defy America and authorise its troops
to invade northern Iraq, in an attempt to wipe out Kurdish guerillas.

The Turkish Parliament is due to debate the military mission today,
and – with the support of the Government and most opposition parties –
is certain to give it authorisation when it is put to the vote.

Faced with this major setback at the hands of a country which has
until now been a key military ally in the Middle East, US House members
are backing away from the genocide vote which until last week seemed
certain to pass with a resounding majority.

"Turkey obviously feels they are getting poked in the eye over
something that happened a century ago, and maybe this isn’t a good
time to be doing that," said Representative Allen Boyd, a Florida
Democrat who withdrew his support for the Bill on Monday night.

"I think it is a good resolution and horrible timing," Representative
Mike Ross, an Arkansas Democrat, told The New York Times.

Originally 226 of the 435 members of the House helped to write the
resolution, but at least 12 have backed out in the last day alone. A
group of senior House Democrats are planning to ask their leadership
to drop plans for a vote on the resolution, already condemned by the
Bush administration as dangerously provocative.

The White House has warned Turkey against unilateral action
in northern Iraq – the only part of the troubled country that has
remained relatively stable amid the violent political convulsions
that have torn apart the rest of Iraq.

Today’s debate in the Turkish parliament is however likely to give
the country’s army a free hand to cross the border and take any action
it feels necessary.

"This is self defence," said Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime
Minister, in a television interview.

"Passage of this motion does not mean an immediate incursion will
follow, but we will act at the right time and under the right
conditions."

Turkey says there are about 3,000 Kurdish separatist guerillas of
the PKK party using northern Iraq as a base to launch attacks in
Turkey. In more than two decades of conflict between Kurdish rebels
and the Turkish state, more than 30,000 people have been killed.

The immediate trigger for Turkey’s desire to invade was a deadly
ambush against Turkish troops last week, which increased the public
pressure on the Government to be seen to take action.

The Turkish Government’s invasion threat has caused alarm in
Baghdad. The Iraqi Government held a crisis cabinet meeting last night,
and decided to send a high-level political and security delegation
to Turkey to seek a diplomatic solution.

Tareq al-Hashemi, an Iraqi Vice-President, is already in Turkey
lobbying the Prime Minister and the President against the use of
military force.

Turkey has blamed Iraq and the US for failing to take action to root
out the Kurdish guerillas in the mountains of northern Iraq. The
Government in Baghdad has however got little clout in the Kurdish
north, whose leaders have repeatedly refused to take up arms against
their ethnic kin in the PKK.

Brent Scowcroft, a former US National Security Council adviser, blamed
Washington for failing to do enough to address Turkish concerns about
the PKK.

"We have taken some steps but they have been very inadequate," said
Mr Scowcroft.

Antonio Guterres, the head of the United Nations refugee agency,
says he is deeply concerned that Turkish action could lead to big
displacements of people. The "relatively stable" area had until now
acted as a haven for Iraqis displaced from other parts of the country.

Turkey is tremendously sensitive over the fate of the Armenians, and
has prosecuted Turkish writers who dared to mention the subject. It
says that large numbers of both Christian Armenians and Muslim Ottoman
Turks died during the First World War, many during forced relocations,
but it refuses to sanction the idea that the intention was to eliminate
the Armenians.

America has a million citizens of Armenian extraction, most of them
staunchly behind the resolution in Congress.

October 18, 2007 edition –

tml

How ‘genocide’ vote lost steam

A House vote to condemn mass killings of Armenians as ‘genocide’ has
stumbled on pragmatic concerns.

By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Washington

The sudden misgivings about a popular House resolution condemning as
"genocide" the large-scale killings of Armenians more than nine
decades ago illustrate a recurring tug of war in US foreign policy:
when to take the moral high ground and when to heed the pragmatic
realities of national interests.

The measure, which would put the House of Representatives on record as
characterizing as genocide the deaths of more than 1 million Armenians
at the hands of the Ottoman Empire, appeared on track to passage by
the full House after the Foreign Affairs Committee approved it last
week. But pressure from the White House – worried about the impact of
the nonbinding measure on relations with Turkey, a crucial logistical
partner in the war in Iraq – is now causing Republicans and Democrats
who had supported the measure to reconsider.

"We regularly see the impulse of Wilsonian idealism, the emphasis on
democracy and human rights, counterbalanced by the pragmatic demands
of realpolitik. It’s one of the constant dynamics of American foreign
policy," says Thomas Henriksen, a foreign-policy scholar at the Hoover
Institution in Stanford, Calif. "We want to be the city on the hill,
but then some overriding interests come up and we say, ‘Oh, that’s
different.’ "

In this case, the overriding interest appears to be keeping on good
terms with Turkey, a NATO ally that opposed the war in Iraq but that
allows the United States to use bases there as part of crucial supply
lines to US troops and personnel in Iraq.

Prospects for a full House statement on Armenian genocide have been
feeding nationalist flames in Turkey. The government of Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has already been battling heavy anti-American
public opinion as it acts to address the problem of recurring attacks
by Kurdish rebels from across the border in Kurdish Iraq.

For many in Turkey, including in the government, the US has not done
enough in next-door Iraq and with its Kurdish allies to address the
activities of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK
– a group the US lists as a terrorist organization.

On Wednesday, the government won a vote in the Turkish parliament
authorizing the military to undertake cross-border incursions into
Iraq where the PKK is based. The destabilizing potential of such
military operations is as worrying to the Bush administration as
Turkish threats to end use of its air bases by the US.

US cautions Turkey

President Bush said at a press conference Wednesday that the US is
making it clear to the Turkish government that sending large numbers
of troops into northern Iraq would not be productive.

All these factors are beginning to weigh on House members, some of
whom last week predicted easy passage of the genocide resolution. On
Wednesday, a group of prominent Democrats from subcommittees on NATO
and security in Europe urged Speaker Nancy Pelosi not to bring the
Armenian resolution to a full House vote. Majority leader Steny Hoyer
(D) of Maryland said Tuesday he still thought the resolution would be
brought to a vote, but he acknowledged that "a number of people
… are revisiting their own positions." He said that would prompt a
reevaluation of support for the measure and of timing of a vote.

"The fact is, if you get an increasing number of Democrats joining
Republicans who already oppose this measure, it’s not going to pass,"
says Lawrence Korb, a foreign-policy specialist at the Center for
American Progress, a Democratic-leaning think tank in Washington.

The intense politicking on the issue further exemplifies how national
interests tend to supersede all other concerns in international
relations, experts say. "The United States, like any other great
power, seriously considers moral issues only to the extent that those
moral issues coincide with substantive interests," says Andrew
Bacevich, who teaches foreign policy at Boston University’s Center for
International Relations.

Mr. Bush referred to a "genocidal campaign" against Armenians in 2000
before becoming president but has since avoided the G-word in the
Armenian context. Yet he has been willing to call killings in the
Sudanese province of Darfur "genocide."

Some say that only proves the point that taking such a stance is
possible when less is at stake. "Although there’s been much
speechifying about the Darfur situation, for instance, the US has
taken no effective action to respond to the suffering of the people
there simply because the US has no serious interests in Darfur. It’s
not uplifting or inspiring," Mr. Bacevich adds, "but it’s the way
international politics works."

Other examples: Burma, Dalai Lama

Other recent examples of taking the moral high ground when there
appears to be little practical risk include Burma, as well as official
reception of the Dalai Lama on his visit this week to Washington,
experts say. "The recent case of Myanmar or Burma demonstrates that
it’s easiest to take the moral high ground when there are no
countervailing interests to take into consideration," says
Mr. Henriksen. "We don’t have strong ties or significant trade with
that country, so we’re not risking a lot there."

The White House did make an effort to assuage China’s concerns about
the Dalai Lama’s visit by emphasizing his place as a religious and not
a political leader, and by keeping his Tuesday visit to the White
House to private quarters and not the Oval Office. Bush said his
admiration of the Dalai Lama stems from the leader’s support for
religious freedom. "I do not think it’s going to seriously damage
relations" with China, he added.

Although national interests may reign supreme in determining conduct
on such issues, a contributing factor is domestic politics, including
the influence of one-issue lobbying groups. In matters of foreign
policy, the power of ethnic organizations in a nation of immigrants
also enters the picture, experts say. "The truth is that this action
by Congress, on a historical event they have no competence to render
judgment on, has nothing to do with foreign policy and everything to
do with domestic politics," says Bacevich.

The measure has been sought by representatives from districts in
California, New Jersey, and Michigan, with large concentrations of
Armenian-Americans. That aspect of the issue points up what Henriksen
calls "ethnic politics." "It true with the Cuba issue, where a
pragmatic approach might say we should open up their system with more
trade and exchanges," he says. "But the Cuban-Americans have a tight
check on that."

Copyright © 2007 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.

Los Angeles Times
With his sister killed last week by guards for a U.S. convoy, a local
man seeks to get 3 nieces out of Baghdad.

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 17, 2007

Peter Dishchekenian went to meet his parents at the airport early this
week, wondering how to tell them the horrible news.

He couldn’t do it when they arrived — his father, a retired computer
programmer, was too happy, glowing after a two-week trip to Armenia.

So Peter, 31, drove them home to Glendale first and sat them down in
the living room.

"There was a tragic accident in Iraq," he said in their native
Armenian, his voice cracking. "It involved some contractors and Aunt
Maro. She passed away."

Daniel Dishchekenian, 62, repeated his sister’s name, Maro. Then he
stared at the floor. After a while, he put his hand over his eyes, and
he began to weep.

Marani "Maro" Ohannes, 48, a mother of three living in Baghdad, was
shot by private security guards Oct. 9 while ferrying neighbors home
from church.

Dishchekenian had not seen his sister, a former scientist for Iraq’s
Agriculture Ministry, in almost 30 years. He thought he had time, that
the U.S. invasion would stabilize the country and allow the family to
reunite in their hometown of Basra in the south. Now he’s desperate to
rescue Ohannes’ three daughters, his brother and another sister from
Iraq before they too become casualties.

"We are working to get them out at any price," he said.

Private security companies in Iraq have been drawing criticism since
employees of Blackwater USA, hired by the U.S. government, opened fire
in a Baghdad square last month, killing 17 Iraqis. Blackwater said its
personnel had come under attack, but Iraqis said the Blackwater guards
began the shooting. The incident is under investigation.

The guards who killed Ohannes were employed by an Australian company
based in the United Arab Emirates, Unity Resources Group, also hired
to protect U.S. contractors.

Daniel Dishchekenian was born in Iraq but considers himself an
Armenian American. As an American citizen, he was stunned to hear that
his sister had been killed to protect a U.S. convoy. He fears the
significance of her death will be lost on most Americans accustomed to
a daily death toll of Iraqis killed in Baghdad.

Ohannes was the baby, the sister he grew up with in a one-room mud
house. Their father, a shoemaker, built the house by hand after he was
forced to flee Turkey in the mass relocations of Armenians in 1915.

She struggled like the rest of her eight siblings to graduate from
college, then stayed home to care for her ailing parents and husband
while other relatives fled the country. Two years ago her husband
died, leaving her to support daughters Nora, 20, Karon, 18, and Alice,
13.

Ohannes never asked for help, Dishchekenian said, but he called and
sent money anyway.

The last time he talked to her on the phone a few months ago, she and
her girls sounded scared.

"They didn’t feel safe," he said. "It was not only the security people
but the insurgents. The fear was there always."

Dishchekenian tries to imagine how his sister died. He has seen
photographs of her white 1990 Oldsmobile after the shooting, the
driver’s side door dripping with blood. He keeps a copy of the photos
that ran in an Armenian newspaper.

His brother Albert Dishchekenian, 55, and sister Ana Sahak, 53, who
live in Iraq, told him that Ohannes was driving back from church with
a woman riding beside her and two children in the back seat when
security contractors fired a machine gun at them. When Albert
Dishchekenian and Sahak claimed Ohannes’ body from police afterward,
it was riddled with bullets. Her passenger Geneva Jalal, 30, also was
killed.

Leedya Sargis, Ohannes’ sister-in-law, said the family tried to
contact Unity, but did not receive a response.

Unity contends that the contractors tried to warn Ohannes to stay back
with signs, strobe lights, hand signals and a flare before shooting.

MORAL POSTURING, IMMORAL RESULT

Wilmington Morning Star, NC
Oct 16 2007

Democrats in the U.S. House apparently want to prove they can make as
big a disaster in the Middle East as President Bush has. They have
chosen this moment to pass a purely rhetorical resolution declaring
that the mass murder of Armenians between 1915 and 1923 amounted to
genocide by the Turks.

It did, if you accept the judgment of many historians. For example,
the head of a Genocide Studies Program at Yale calls it " the clearest
case of genocide apart from the Holocaust."

But whatever anyone calls it, it’s too late to help the victims. And
it’s absurd to believe that if the U.S. House officially calls
massacre in the past century "genocide," future tyrants and lunatics
will desist from wiping out their enemies.

The way to stop genocide is to stop it, not to denounce it decades
later.

The resolution would do nothing except to please voters who care –
passionately and understandably – about the murder of their family
and friends in the chaotic violence that followed World War I.

But it also would further enrage the Turks, who are plenty angry
enough already.

These are the same allies who are allowing us to use a base in their
country to supply our forces in Iraq. These are the same allies we’re
begging not to attack Kurds in Iraq, some of whom have been helping
Kurds in Iraq attack the Turks.

No wonder the White House is urging Pelosi and her colleagues to cool
their rhetoric. If they are responsible, they will.

016/EDITORIAL/710160315

Christian Science Monitor
October 17, 2007 edition

U.S. can calm a ruffled Turkey

On both the genocide and Iraq issues, the US can take steps to repair
ties with this key NATO ally.

Two hot-button issues have set off Turkish ire and severely strained
US ties: Turkey’s history with war and increased dangers to its
present-day security. In both cases, it’s tempting to fault Ankara’s
overreaction. But US lawmakers and the White House should first
examine their own actions.

True, there’s something galling about this NATO ally’s response to the
first of these issues – last week’s resolution by a House committee to
label the killing of 1.5 million Armenians under the Ottoman Turks as
"genocide."

The measure is symbolic, without the force of law, yet Turkey
threatens to pull critical logistical support for US troops in Iraq
and Afghanistan if the full House passes the resolution. Turkey
doesn’t deny the Armenian deaths during World War I, but it does deny
a systematic slaughter.

Several countries have passed legislative judgement on that historic
tragedy, creating anger in Turkey – a sign of its inability to face up
to the past. So what’s to stop the US House from soon doing the same?

The strongest argument is that now is not the time to sacrifice an
essential ally in a current war (about 70 percent of US air cargo to
Iraq passes through Turkey), over an event that happened 90 years ago,
however worthy the reason.

But another argument deserves mention in this context, and requires
self-reflection: At a time when the world questions US moral standing,
moral pronouncements from Washington ring hollow.

Much of the world wonders what has become of the US declaration of
"genocide" in Darfur, about its inaction to stop Rwanda’s genocide, or
why it tolerates Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. It asks why
more senior-level officers weren’t held accountable for Abu Ghraib,
about US legal treatment of terrorist suspects, and why the US still
appears to find wiggle room in the definition of torture.

At this moment, it’s more appropriate for US lawmakers to do what they
can to restore America’s moral reputation, than to comment on the
historic mistakes of others or undercut US war efforts.

As for Turkey’s squawk over the second issue – separatist Kurdish
terrorists crossing over from northern Iraq to attack its soldiers and
civilians – that, too, is cause for US self-examination.

Turkey is threatening a full-scale incursion into northern Iraq to go
after Kurdish terrorists fighting for an independent homeland that
would include southeast Turkey. But a wider war in Iraq is not in
anyone’s interest.

The pressure on the US to please Iraqi Kurds in order to help Iraq
along must be overwhelming, while pleasing the Turks (who wouldn’t let
the US invade Iraq from the north in 2003) is secondary. Yet, the US
can do more, as Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns admits.

The US needs to better balance its interest in Iraq with its interest
in maintaining Turkey as a bridge-building NATO ally between Europe
and the Middle East. Pressuring Iraqi Kurds to arrest terrorist
leaders and close training camps is not too much to ask in return for
years of US protection and advocacy.

Turkey also has work to do on both these issues. It could scrap laws
that make the "genocide" description a crime and it can do more for
its Kurdish minority. But Washington should start with what it can do
to repair this relationship.

Source: l

BUSH IS RIGHT ON TURKISH ISSUE

Barre Montpelier Times Argus, VT
?AID=/20071015/OPINION01/710150307/1021/OPINION01
Oct 15 2007

America’s critics – and many of our friends, too – have long
accused the Bush administration of unfettered arrogance and
self-righteousness. Now a number of Democrats of Capitol Hill have
shown that these traits aren’t confined to Republicans.

Twenty-seven members of the House foreign affairs committee voted
last week to condemn Turkey for its role in a horror that occurred
more than 90 years ago. And Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged Sunday to
bring the matter to a full vote in the House.

Relations between Washington and a key ally, not only in the war in
Iraq and but in the war against terrorism in general, have suddenly
and needlessly turned sour.

Perhaps this folly could have been averted had President Bush not
squandered his influence on Capitol Hill through his own ineptitude,
but headstrong Democrats made it clear they weren’t about to heed
the warnings from a discredited White House or even from the state
department.

Seven years ago, a similar resolution passed the same House committee
but President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, had sufficient clout to
persuade the Republican leader, Dennis Hastert, to keep the measure
from going to the full House. Those were the good old days, when a
president’s foreign policy priorities carried some weight with our
elected representatives in Congress. Turkey has warned that if the
full House approves the resolution, it will reconsider its support for
the American war effort. Importantly, that support includes permission
to ship essential supplies through Turkey and northern Iraq.

Turkey’s military chief, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, said Sunday that if
the full House passes the resolution "our military relations with the
United States can never be the same," according to a Reuters report.

"The U.S. shot its own foot," he also said.

And so, an act of untimely self-righteousness by Congressional
Democrats means Bush must somehow to mollify the Turks, who are already
itching to fight Kurdish rebels carrying out incursions from northern
Iraq. If Turkish troops cross into Iraq to pursue these rebels,
efforts to bring peace to that region would be further crippled.

Historians generally agree that the Ottoman Empire – from which Turkey
later emerged – did indeed slaughter Armenians on a scale that meets
the definition of genocide. It was a crime against civilization,
and the Turkish people deserve scorn for refusing to acknowledge
their nation’s guilt.

Turks should have long ago admitted this shameful chapter in their
history, and their failure to do so – indeed, their insistence, year
after year, that the genocide never happened – remains a black mark
against a country eager for respect and for acceptance by the western
community of nations.

"We all deeply regret the tragic suffering of the Armenian people
that began in 1915," Bush said in response to the committee’s 27-21
vote. "This resolution is not the right response to these historic
mass killings, and its passage would do great harm to our relations
with a key ally in NATO and in the global war on terror."

The president is right. While there is every reason to be appalled by
what happened to the Armenians, for the House of Representatives to
vote, almost a century later, to deplore this particular massacre may
burnish the self-image of the politicians but it needlessly complicates
the task of maintaining positive diplomatic relations with a nation
that, for its own reasons, is extremely sensitive to such criticism.

Would we like it if Turkey censured the United States for its treatment
of blacks and Native Americans?

EUROPEAN ARMENIAN FEDERATION
for Justice and Democracy
Avenue de la Renaissance 10
B-1000 Bruxelles
Tel/ Fax: +32 2 732 70 27/26
Website :Eafjd
Contact : Varténie ECHO
Tel. / Fax. : +32 (0) 2 732 70 27

COMMUNIQUE DE PRESSE
Pour diffusion immédiate

dimanche 14 octobre 2007

Franco Frattini, vice-président de la Commission européenne
inaugurera la Seconde Convention des Arméniens d’Europe

La Fédération Euro-Arménienne vient de publier le programme final de
la Seconde Convention des Arméniens d’Europe. Outre les nombreuses
personnalités politiques de premier plan déjà annoncées, la
Fédération informe que M. Franco Frattini, Vice-président de la
Commission européenne et Commissaire en charge de la Direction
Générale « Justice, Liberté et Sécurité » participera à la cérémonie
d’inauguration de la Convention.

« Nous sommes très honorés et très satisfaits de la venue de M.
Frattini à notre Convention. La venue du Vice-président de la
Commission est un acte politique fort, par lequel l’exécutif européen
montre qu’il sait être soucieux des attentes des citoyens européens
que nous sommes » a commenté Hilda Tchoboian, la Présidente de la
Fédération Euro-Arménienne.

La Fédération Euro-Arménienne rappelle que cette Convention
exceptionnelle va rassembler des personnes venues de 29 pays – dont
19 de l’Union européenne parmi lesquels de nombreux nouveaux
Etats-membres. Pour la plupart des nouveaux venus, cette Convention
constituera leur première participation à un évènement paneuropéen.

Le programme final de la Convention est désormais disponible sur le
site Internet de la Fédération Euro-Arménienne. La Fédération précise
qu’outre M. Frattini et les orateurs déjà annoncés, Mme
Oomen-Ruijten, le rapporteur du Parlement européen sur la Turquie,
pourrait prendre la parole lors de Convention.