NNY RESIDENTS WITH TIES TO ARMENIA SAY RESOLUTION ON GENOCIDE WILL STALL
By Bob Beckstead

WatertownDailyTimes.com
rtowndailytimes.com/article/20100312/NEWS05/303129 989
March 12 2010
MA

MASSENA — Although a congressional committee last week approved
a resolution branding the World War I-era killing of Armenians as
genocide, area residents with family roots in Armenia don’t expect
official recognition by the U.S. government to go much further.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee endorsed the resolution by a
23-22 vote and sent it to the full House, where its fate is uncertain.

But Massena resident Walter V. Basmajian, who had relatives who were
killed, said he doesn’t believe the resolution will go any further.

His father, he said, escaped and went to Argentina, and other families
made their way to the United States and Canada.

"The president won’t recognize it," Mr. Basmajian said. "Obama said
during his campaign he was going to recognize the genocide and he
never did it. Now he denies doing it. He won’t do it. Congress is
sitting on it. We don’t have the population for the votes. There’s a
lot of Armenians here and in Massachusetts and California and that’s
about it. We don’t have enough power."

An Associated Press report said historians estimate that up to 1.5
million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks during World War I.

That was widely viewed by scholars as the first genocide of the
20th century.

But Turkish officials have denied it was a genocide, instead saying
the toll had been inflated and those killed were victims of civil
war and unrest.

President Obama last April failed to brand the killings as genocide
in an annual White House statement on the day marking Armenian
remembrance.

Mr. Basmajian said, "They didn’t want to call it genocide. (But)
that’s what happened. They say a lot of Turks were fighting. They say
they lost a lot of people too and they won’t consider it a genocide."

Turkey withdrew its U.S. ambassador, Namik Tan, last week after the
congressional committee approved the resolution. Turkey also warned
that the resolution’s approval could jeopardize cooperation with the
United States and could set back negotiations aimed at opening the
border between Turkey and Armenia that has been closed since 1994.

Mr. Basmajian said that’s why the United States won’t consider passing
the measure in the long run.

"A lot of little countries did recognize it," he said, but if the
United States goes along the same lines, Mr. Basmajian said, there
would be retaliation from Turkey.

Ike Bogosian took a trip to Armenia and Turkey two years ago, and he
said that while citizens in Turkey were willing to admit what happened,
the government will never do that.

"They just don’t want to do it. They know what happened. We know what
happened," Mr. Bogosian said.

He said that during his trip to Turkey, he went to a church in the
village where his father lived.

"I was there and those people apologized to me. It’s all political,"
he said. "They know what it was."

Mr. Bogosian said members of the U.S. government, including President
Obama, have admitted it was genocide.

"They all say it just to get in. Then they just forget about it, twist
it around and say it’s not the right time. When is the right time?

They either did or they didn’t do it," he said.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress