KOCHARIAN HONORS U.S. ENVOY
By Emil Danielyan

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Sept 6 2006

President Robert Kocharian handed on Wednesday a prestigious state
award to John Evans during a farewell meeting with the outgoing U.S.
ambassador to Armenia.

Kocharian said, according to his office, that he decided to award
the Mkhitar Gosh Medal to Evans in recognition of the latter’s
"remarkable contribution to the development and strengthening of
Armenian-American friendly relations." The bilateral ties have made
"serious progress" and yielded "tangible results" during the retiring
diplomat’s two-year service in Armenia, the presidential press service
quoted him as saying.

Evans was cited as agreeing with Kocharian and singling out the U.S.
government’s decision earlier this year to provide $235.6 million
worth of economic assistance to Armenia under the Millennium Challenge
Account (MCA) program. He is apparently the first U.S. government
official awarded by the Armenian government.

The award appears to be a thinly veiled gesture of gratitude
for Evans’s public description of the 1915-1918 mass killings
and deportations of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as genocide. "The
Armenian Genocide was the first genocide of the 20th century," the
envoy had declared during a series of meetings in early 2005 with
Armenian-American activists in California.

The bombshell remarks contradicted a long-running U.S. government
policy of avoiding the use of the word genocide with regard to the
Armenian massacres. They are believed to have been instrumental in
the Bush administration’s decision, officially announced in May,
to replace Evans with another career diplomat. The normal diplomatic
term for U.S. ambassadors abroad is three years.

In an interview with RFE/RL last week, Evans refused to comment
on the controversy triggered by his recall, saying that it is an
internal U.S. affair. He indicated that he might speak up about it
in a future book.