SENATORS OBAMA, BOXER AND OTHERS TO SUBMIT WRITTEN QUESTIONS

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[01:08 pm] 20 June, 2008

WASHINGTON, DC – Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) castigated the Bush
Administration’s policy of Armenian Genocide denial, today,
dramatically pressing U.S. Ambassadorial nominee to Armenia Marie
Yovanovitch regarding the Administration’s refusal to properly
characterize Ottoman Turkey’s systematic destruction of its Armenian
population as a genocide, reported the Armenian National Committee
of America (ANCA).

The Associated Press, in an article today entitled "Nominee Refuses to
Call Killings Genocide," noted Senator Menendez’s "intense questioning"
and the "prosecutorial style" of his inquiries during the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing. The AP article,
which was also carried by MSNBC and other media outlets, quoted ANCA
Executive Director Aram Hamparian as saying, after the hearing, that,
"we were troubled by Ambassador Yovanovitch’s refusal to offer any
meaningful rationale for the Administration’s ongoing complicity in
Turkey’s denials."

Sen. Menendez, who had placed two consecutive holds on previous
ambassadorial nominee Dick Hoagland for denying the Armenian Genocide,
meticulously questioned Yovanovitch by presenting historical State
Department documents from the time of the Genocide and comparing
those statements with her opening remarks.

"The US government – and certainly I – acknowledges and mourns the mass
killings, ethnic cleansing and forced deportations that devastated over
one and a half million Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire,"
said Yovanovich in her opening testimony.

Following these remarks, Sen. Menendez presented the nominee with
several documents quoting U.S. Ambassadors to the Ottoman Empire
Henry Morgethau and John Elkus, and other U.S. diplomats who served
in the region at the time of the Armenian Genocide and documented
the destruction of the Armenian population.

Juxtaposing the eyewitness accounts of these U.S. officials with the
definition of the crime as outlined by the U.N. Convention on the
Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, Sen. Menendez
asked whether the President’s annual April 24th remarks, Yovanovich’s
prepared statements, and her responses regarding U.S. diplomatic
reporting matched the U.N. Convention, to which the U.S. is a party.

Amb. Yovanovich sidestepped this question, stating instead that it is
the President and the State Department who set the policy of defining
historic events. In her testimony, she publicly confirmed that "It has
been President Bush’s policy, as well as that of previous presidents
of both parties, not to use that term."

Sen. Menendez responded, "It is a shame that career foreign service
officers have to be brought before the Committee and find difficulty
in acknowledging historical facts, and find difficulty in acknowledging
the realities of what has been internationally recognized." He went on
to state, "And it is amazing to me that we can talk about millions,
a million and a half human beings who were slaughtered, we can
talk about those who were raped, we can talk about those who were
forcibly pushed out of their country, and we can have presidential
acknowledgements of that, but then we cannot call it what it is. It
is a ridiculous dance that the Administration is doing on the use of
the term genocide. It is an attempt to suggest that we don’t want to
strain our relationships with Turkey…

I believe acknowledging historical facts as they are is a principal
that is easily understood both at home and abroad. So while the
Administration believes that this policy benefits us vis-a-vis our
relationship with Turkey, I think they should also recognize that
it hurts our relationship elsewhere and it tarnishes the United
States’ history of being a place where truth is spoken to power,
and acknowledgment of our failures of the past make us stronger,
not weaker; recognizing the evils of the past do not trap us, but
they set us free."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress