AzerTag, Azerbaijan
June 10 2005

USA AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA JOHN EVANS STRIPPED OF PREMIUM FOR AMERICAN
DIPLOMATS
[June 10, 2005, 20:36:37]

The American Association of Foreign Service has stripped the
ambassador of the United States to Armenia John Evans of his premium
`For constructive disagreements’.

The said Association consisting of present and former officials of
the State Department annually awards with the premium after Christian
of A. Herter of the diplomats distinguished by `constructive
disagreements’. For example, last year, the diplomat, not concordant
with the policy of the government in Iraq and expressed the opinion
in the official form has been awarded with this premium. The given
premium is founded with a view of increase of creative thinking and
intellectual courage among the American diplomats and entrusted
diplomats who do not quail before bureaucracy of the State Department
and openly state the ideas.

John Evans’s nominee has drawn attention of selective committee after
he, acting this year before members of the Armenian community in
California, has named `genocide’ the events, which have occurred in
1915 in Ottoman Empire. Ambassador J. Evans has declared that it is
necessary to carry out more open and fair discussions on the given
question. We shall remind, that at the same meeting, the ambassador
the USA to Armenia has told to representatives of the Armenian
Diaspora that `everyone understands that Karabakh cannot be given to
Azerbaijan’. However, statement of J. Evans has caused such
diplomatic resonance, that the ambassador has been compelled not only
to take the words back, but even to explain the reason of the
statement. He has told, that, naming `genocide’ of event of 1915 in
Ottoman Empire, he expressed not official, but personal opinion.

For this reason, the American Association of Foreign Service will not
give the premium to John Evans.

As the president of Association John Lambert told the newspaper
`Washington Post’, members of selective committee have once again
discussed John Evans’s nominee and came to a conclusion, that he does
not correspond to criteria of the winner. J. Lambert has added, that
for the first time in the history of the Organization the candidate
loses the premium after its announcement.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress