Hürriyet, Turkey
Feb 28 2009

Armenian lobby targets US lawmaker

WASHINGTON – The two largest U.S. Armenian groups have condemned a
leading Democratic congresswoman for qualifying what they see as the
"Armenian genocide" as an "inter-communal war" and a "historic
dispute" between Turkey and Azerbaijan.

In a Wednesday letter to all her 434 colleagues in the House of
Representatives, lawmaker Eddie Bernice Johnson, representing the
Dallas area in Texas, opposed a planned resolution that urged the
United States to formally recognize 1915 incidents as "genocide".

Addressing the resolution’s sponsors in her letter, Johnson said: "I
respectfully ask for your careful consideration of the proposed
Armenian genocide resolution, a resolution that holds that the
inhumanity in the inter-communal war in 1915 was one-sided."

She added: "I am naturally troubled by the assertions in the
resolution, which would endorse one side of a historic dispute between
Armenia and Turkey, thus undermining today’s normalization process."

An eight-term lawmaker, Johnson said she was greatly encouraged by
progress in Turkish-Armenian relations, as evidenced by President
Abdullah Gul’s September visit to Armenia.

"With the number of challenges in the region critical to U.S. national
security — spanning from Russia, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, and Iran —
the United States cannot afford at this time to derail these hopeful
efforts. On the contrary, we should nurture and encourage them,"
Johnson said.

Johnson’s letter won the ire of the Armenian National Committee of
America, or ANCA, and the Armenian Assembly of America, or AAA.

"The congresswoman’s line of attack, long ago discredited by
historians and genocide scholars, is a particularly toxic form of
denial that seeks, without any basis in fact, to create parity between
perpetrator and victim," the ANCA said in its website.