ARF Blames Protocols For Tight U.S. House Vote on Genocide Bill
By Asbarez Staff on Mar 5th, 2010
cols-for-tight-u-s-house-vote-on-genocide-bill/
Y EREVAN (RFE/RL)-The opposition Armenian Revolutionary Federation
blamed on Friday Armenia’s controversial agreements with Turkey for
the difficulty with which pro-Armenian lawmakers pushed their latest
genocide resolution through a U.S. congressional committee.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee approved the non-binding measures
by 23 votes to 22. The outcome of the vote, which lasted for over 90
minutes, hang in the balance until the last minute. The panel passed
similar resolutions, most recently in 2007, by much wider margins in
the past.
Committee members opposed to the resolution argued, among other
things, that the fence-mending Turkish-Armenian protocols call for the
formation of a joint `subcommission’ that would study the 1915 mass
killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. They also said calling
the massacres a genocide could scuttle Turkish parliamentary
ratification of the protocols.
Armen Rustamian, the chairman of the ARF’s supreme body in Armenia,
said this is the reason why several U.S. congressmen declined to vote
for the genocide bill this time around.
`I think all those who followed the committee debate understood and
saw very well just how these protocols can put the brakes on the
process of international recognition of the Armenian genocide,’
Rustamian told a news conference. `When we had been saying that for
months, many thought that this is just a partisan view.’
Giro Manoyan, the party’s political director, agreed, saying that the
protocols have given opponents of U.S. recognition of the genocide a
new argument.
The ARF has been highly critical of President Serzh Sarkisian’s policy
of rapprochement with Turkey that culminated in the signing of the
protocols last October. Their leaders have repeatedly said that Ankara
will exploit the would-be historical `subcommission’ to deter the
United States and other nations from recognizing the genocide.
Sarkisian and his political allies insist, however that the
Turkish-Armenian rapprochement will not slow the recognition process.