OBAMA AVOIDS CALLING ARMENIA KILLINGS GENOCIDE
BY PETER BAKER

The International Herald Tribune
April 26, 2010 Monday
France

ABSTRACT

President Barack Obama, who as a candidate vowed to use the term
genocide to describe the Ottoman mass slaughter of Armenians nearly
a century ago, has once again declined to do so.

President Barack Obama, who as a candidate vowed to use the term
genocide to describe the Ottoman mass slaughter of Armenians nearly
a century ago, has once again declined to do so as he marked the
anniversary of the start of the killings.

Trying to navigate one of his more emotionally fraught foreign policy
challenges, Mr. Obama issued a statement Saturday from his weekend
getaway here commemorating the victims of the killings but tried to
avoid alienating Turkey, a NATO ally, which adamantly rejects the
genocide label.

"On this solemn day of remembrance, we pause to recall that 95 years
ago one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century began," Mr. Obama
said in the statement, which largely echoed the same language he used
on this date a year ago. "In that dark moment of history, 1.5 million
Armenians were massacred or marched to their death in the final days
of the Ottoman Empire."

When he was running for president and seeking votes from
Armenian-Americans, Mr. Obama had no qualms about using the term
genocide and criticized the George W. Bush administration for
recalling an ambassador who dared to say the word. As a senator,
he supported legislation calling the killings genocide, and in a
statement on Jan. 19, 2008, he said that "the Armenian genocide is
not an allegation, a personal opinion, or a point of view, but rather
a widely documented fact."

Two years later, as president, he used none of that sort of language,
though as he did a year ago, he hinted to Armenians that he still felt
the same way. "I have consistently stated my own view of what occurred
in 1915, and my view of that history has not changed," he said.

His statement came as the issue has grown as a source of tension
between the United States and Turkey, and as a reconciliation
effort between Turkey and Armenia, that Mr. Obama has championed,
has seemingly stalled.

In March, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted narrowly to
condemn the killings as an act of genocide, defying a last-minute
plea from the Obama administration to forgo a vote because it would
threaten the Turkish-Armenian reconciliation efforts. Turkey briefly
recalled its ambassador from Washington in protest.

Armenia announced Thursday that it would suspend ratification of
peace accords with Turkey, apparently because it was angered that
Turkey was making new demands. Armenia insisted that it was not
altogether abandoning the peace process, but analysts indicated that
the Armenian government believed Turkey was trying to pressure it
to reach a separate peace treaty with another neighbor, Azerbaijan,
a close Turkish ally.

Although the president’s statement did not use the term "genocide"
on Saturday, it was strong enough to provoke a sharp statement from
the Turkish Foreign Ministry, which called the language a reflection
of a one-sided political perception. "Third countries neither have a
right nor authority to judge the history of Turkish-Armenian relations
with political motives," the statement said.

Meanwhile, the Armenian National Committee of America, an advocacy
group based in Washington, condemned the "euphemisms and evasive
terminology" in Mr. Obama’s statement and called it "yet another
disgraceful capitulation to Turkey’s threats."