NEW AMERICAN AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA FINALLY ARRIVES IN YEREVAN

Today’s Zaman
Sept 19 2008
Turkey

The United States has finally sent an ambassador to Armenia, more
than two years after the previous one had his tour of duty cut short.

The US Embassy in Yerevan said Marie Yovanovitch arrived Wednesday
night to take up her new post. A career diplomat, she had previously
served as the US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan.

Lawmakers had delayed consideration of Yovanovitch’s nomination to the
Armenian post in a dispute over the US refusal to label as genocide
the World War I-era killings of Anatolian Armenians.

Armenian-American groups have been seeking to force the Bush
administration to change its policy on the 1915 incidents, but
Yovanovitch clearly adhered to the US line of refusing to label the
incidents as "genocide" at her confirmation hearing in the Senate. 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 has attached great importance to sending Yovanovitch there at a
time of increasing Russian influence in the region and a worsening
conflict with Iran over its alleged development of nuclear arms,
officials said at the time.

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 describe the
Armenian killings as genocide. Bush then proposed Yovanovitch, who
also declined to use the word "genocide."

Yovanovitch’s arrival in Yerevan also comes at a time of rising hopes
for dialogue between Armenia and Turkey after Armenian President Serzh
Sarksyan invited Turkish President Abdullah Gul to watch a World Cup
qualifying match between the Turkish and Armenian national teams in
Yerevan and Gul accepted.

Earlier this month Gul was the first Turkish president to set
foot in Armenia since the country declared independence from the
Soviet Union in 1991. Though Turkey was among the first countries
to recognize Armenia’s independence, it closed its border with the
country and severed formal ties with Yerevan after Armenia occupied
the Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. But the origins of
the dispute between Turkey and Armenia go further back in history.