NEW US AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA APPROVED

Today’s Zaman
Aug 4 2008
Turkey

The US Senate last week confirmed the George W. Bush administration’s
nominee for ambassador to Armenia after a delay by lawmakers who
were unhappy with Marie Yovonovitch’s refusal to accept so-called
"genocide" claims.

Armenian-American groups have been seeking to force the Bush
administration to change its policy on the 1915 incidents,
but Yovanovitch clearly adhered at her confirmation hearing in
the Senate to the US policy of refusing to label the incidents as
"genocide." Last year, the White House withdrew its nomination of
career diplomat Richard Hoagland after one lawmaker blocked it in
an objection to that policy. The post had remained vacant for two
years. Armenia, with the backing of its diaspora, claims that up to
1.5 million of its kin were slaughtered in orchestrated killings in
1915. Turkey rejects the claims, saying that 300,000 Armenians along
with at least as many Turks died in civil strife that emerged when
the Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia.

Washington has had no full-time ambassador in Yerevan since May 2006
and attaches great importance to sending Yovanovitch there at a time
of increasing Russian influence in the region and a worsening conflict
over the development of nuclear arms with Iran, officials have said.

In May 2006 Bush removed John Evans, the last ambassador to Armenia,
who had openly described the Armenian killings as genocide, in
violation of Washington’s official policy. He then nominated career
diplomat Hoagland for the post, but Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat
from New Jersey, blocked the nomination for failing to qualify the
Armenian killings as genocide. Bush then proposed Yovanovitch, who
also has declined to use the word "genocide."