ONCE AGAIN, QUEST FOR ARMENIAN GENOCIDE RESOLUTION BEGINS
By Michael Doyle
McClatchy Washington Bureau
6530.html
Feb 19 2010
WASHINGTON — The latest version of an Armenian genocide resolution is
on track to win House committee approval, but its long-term prospects
remain uncertain.
This plot is familiar. Some characters have changed. The denouement
is still to be determined.
On March 4, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is set to vote on a
resolution declaring that "the Armenian Genocide was conceived and
carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923." Some consider
the resolution diplomatically dangerous, but vote-counters consider
committee passage a foregone conclusion.
"We are confident of a positive outcome," said Bryan Ardouny, executive
director of the Armenian Assembly of America. "We have a track record
of the committee approving the resolution in the past."
Typically, congressional committee chairs will only bring up measures
they are confident will pass.
Residents of California’s San Joaquin Valley, and other regions with
large Armenian-American populations, are watching all of the action
closely, and in some cases participating directly in it. The House
panel’s members include a number of resolution co-sponsors, including
Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno.
Advocates of the resolution say it’s important to account for the
Ottoman Empire killings and depredations that occurred during and after
World War I, when by estimates upward of 1.5 million Armenians died.
"Genocide is not something that can simply be swept under the rug
and forgotten, and our nation cannot continue its policy of denial
regarding the Armenian genocide," Costa said.
Approval by the 45-member House Foreign Affairs Committee, though,
is a far cry from getting the diplomatically dicey resolution through
the full 435-member House of Representatives.
Currently, for instance, the resolution has only 137 House co-sponsors,
far short of the 218 needed for House approval. The last time the
issue arose, in 2007, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declined to bring
the resolution to the House floor until it had the requisite 218
co-sponsors.
Opponents are bringing out their big guns, warning the resolution
would interfere with good diplomatic relations. Turkish and Armenian
negotiators last year agreed to a set of protocols designed to smooth
diplomatic relations, but the respective legislatures have not yet
formally ratified them.
"That would be jeopardized by a political act of passing this
resolution," said David Saltzman, chief counsel to the Turkish
Coalition of America. "Passage of this resolution would be a
potentially impenetrable hurdle (to reconciliation)."
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has likewise recently
denounced the resolution as doing serious harm to U.S.-Turkey
relations.
This plea of bad timing is one of the many familiar elements in the
Armenian genocide fight.
In 2007, the Bush administration successfully argued the resolution
would undermine the use of Turkish bases to resupply U.S. forces in
Iraq. In 2000, then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert killed the resolution,
citing "unusually tense" conditions in the Middle East.
High-powered lobbying is another familiar plot line.
Hastert is now registered as a lobbyist for the Turkish government.
His firm, Dickstein Shapiro, has been paid up to $45,000 a month
for its work on Turkey’s behalf, public records show. One-time House
Minority Leader Richard Gephardt is likewise a registered lobbyist
for Turkey.
Some hope the arrival of the Obama administration will shake up these
familiar faces and oft-heard arguments.
"A lot of things have changed," said Aram Hamparian, executive director
of the Armenian National Committee of America.
While they were in the Senate and campaigning, Hamparian noted,
President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton all endorsed Armenian genocide recognition.
Presidents, though, often back away from their campaign-season
Armenian genocide resolution pledges. Obama, for one, avoided
the term "genocide" in his presidential Armenia proclamation in
April. Reading between the lines, one might see further hints of a
pending administration retreat on the resolution itself.
"Our view is that the negotiations that have been taking place between
Turkey and Armenia offer a positive path for the future," Defense
Secretary Robert Gates said in early February. "Anything that would
impede the success of those discussions and negotiations I think is
objectionable. I would just leave it there."