CONGRESS EMBROILED IN DEBATE BETWEEN ARMENIA AND TURKEY: THE WASHINGTON POST
news.am
March 4 2010
Armenia
Popular American newspaper The Washington Post comments on the Genocide
Resolution scheduled for a vote in the U.S.
Congress for March 4. The document calls on President Obama to label
the events of 1915 as genocide and "use the term during an annual
address on the topic next month," reads the article by Dan Eggen.
According to him, the bill will disclose whether Armenians were "target
for campaign ethnic cleansings." Thereby, Congress gets involved in
a heated debates between Turkey and Armenia," the author emphasizes.
The author recalls that Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton also backed terming of 1915 events as genocide.
Commenting on powerful Turkish lobby that urges to reject resolution,
Eggen brings an example of Fleishman-Hillard public relations firm
that had contract with Turkey estimated at over $100.000 a month or
country’s "current lobbyist" the Gephardt Group that gets $70.000
each month.
The author notes that unlike Turkey, Armenian government does not have
"a U.S. representative on file." However, he names some organizations
such as Armenian National Committee and Armenian Assembly of America
lobbying Armenia’s interests in the U.S.