ARMENIAN GENOCIDE ISSUE TRIPS POLITICIANS AGAIN
By Michael Doyle
McClatchy Newspapers

Kansas City Star, MO
Oct 28 2007

Pelosi WASHINGTON | Armenian genocide resolutions such as the one that
collapsed last week confound congressional leaders and presidential
candidates alike.

Promises come easily and are politically alluring. Delivery is
difficult, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat,
now has learned the hard way. Failure brings second-guessing and no
guarantee of when the resolution might return.

"We’ll continue to stay focused on this," said Rep. Jim Costa,
a California Democrat who is a member of the House Foreign Affairs
Committee. "We’ll await our time."

The resolution declares that "the Armenian genocide was conceived and
carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923" and "1,500,000
men, women and children were killed."

Turkish officials say the resolution twists history, and they spent
$300,000 a month lobbying against it. Bush administration officials
say the resolution undermines relations with a country that borders
Iraq and Iran.

Late Thursday, resolution supporters asked Pelosi to put it off until
a "more favorable" time. Translated: They lack the votes. Publicly,
supporters say they can still win before the 110th Congress ends
next year.

"We’re going to be working this really hard," Rep. Adam Schiff, a
California Democrat, said Friday. "When we bring it up, we want to
be absolutely confident we have the votes."

Skeptics – some of them resolution co-sponsors – are doubtful. One,
Rep. Devin Nunes, a California Republican, said Friday that there was
"zero" chance of reviving the measure next year.

"Democrats aren’t going to bring it up," Nunes said. "They’ve got
shaky feet."

Nunes speculated that the letter sent by Schiff and others to Pelosi
late Thursday afternoon amounted to political cover, a concession of
defeat also designed to shield the Democratic leader from criticism
about letting the bill die.

Undeniably, the genocide resolution puts lawmakers in a bind, and
Pelosi wasn’t the first leader to get entangled in it.

As candidates, George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush,
endorsed the Armenian genocide characterization. They did so in
statements to Armenian-American voters, who are a political force in
certain regions.

As presidents, both subsequently repudiated the term "genocide."

Neither used it in annual commemorations of the 1915-23 Ottoman
Empire horrors.

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