Row over US ambassador’s Armenia genocide remark
The Independent – United Kingdom; Mar 23, 2006
Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Protests are growing over the possible recall of the US ambassador in
Armenia after he described the 1915 massacres of Armenians by the
Ottoman Turks as genocide. If he is recalled, it would be seen as
giving in to Turkish pressure.
Officially, John Marshall Evans remains – for the time being at least
– Washington’s man in Erevan. “Ambassador Evans is our ambassador, and
he continues … to exercise that honour and privilege,” a State
Department official said last week.
But that assurance has satisfied neither the ethnic Armenian community
in the US, nor members of Congress from southern California where the
community is centred. Their suspicion is that a successor for Mr Evans
has al ready been lined up, and he will be ordered home. Adam Schiff
and Grace Napolitano, representing districts in the Los Angeles area,
have taken up the matter with the State Department. “I expressed my
opposition to any disciplinary action being taken against the
ambassador for speaking the truth,” Mr Schiff said.
Mr Evans caused a diplomatic sensation in February 2005 when he flatly
called the massacres a genocide, during an appearance at the
University of California at Berkeley. It was “unbecoming of us as
Americans to play word games here,” he declared. “I will today call it
the Armenian genocide.”
By doing so, he became the first US official to use the loaded word in
an Armenian context. Like the Clinton administration before it, the
Bush administration has always referred to the slaughter as a massacre
or a tragedy, but not as a genocide. The circumspection is widely seen
as an effort not to upset Turkey, an important US ally in the Middle
East that shares borders with Iraq and Iran.
The stand-off follows successive efforts by Mr Schiff to introduce a
bill specifically recognising the events of 1915 as an act of genocide
– efforts that have been blocked at the White House’s behest.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
