COMMITTEE: ARMENIANS ENDURED GENOCIDE
By Lisa Friedman, WASHINGTON BUREAU
The Argus, CA
Sept 16 2005
State Department, House speaker fear resolution could hurt
U.S.-Turkish relations
WASHINGTON – In a momentous victory for California’s sizable Armenian
communities, the House International Relations Committee voted
overwhelmingly Thursday to declare the massacre of Armenians in the
Ottoman Empire a genocide.
In a surprise move, Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San Mateo, declared that after
years of opposing the genocide resolution, he now would support it.
The only Holocaust survivor in Congress and the founder of the
Congressional Human Rights Caucus, Lantos had long cited Washington’s
close relationship with Ankara as a key reason for objecting to
the resolution.
The separate resolutions by Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, and George
Radanovich, R-Fresno, still must pass several hurdles. The State
Department and House Speaker Dennis Hastert fiercely oppose recognition
of the Armenian genocide, arguing its passage will rupture U.S.-Turkish
relations. Both are expected to try to block a full House vote.
Nevertheless, Armenians on Thursday said by voting 35-11 for Schiff’s
bill and 40-7 for Radanovich’s, the panel sent a strong message that
Congress should not equivocate when it comes to recognizing crimes
against humanity.
“If the United States does not step up and acknowledge this history
and show moral backbone and clarity on these sorts of issues, people
are going to be disappointed in us. We believe in this country because
it does the right thing,” said Armen Carapetian, spokesman for the
Armenian National Committee of America.
The panel voted after more than three hours of tense debate, in
which lawmakers invoked the Holocaust, slavery, Darfur and the fate
of American Indians.
Every Californian on the panel voted in favor of the resolutions.
In 2000, when the issue came before the same committee, Lantos told
his colleagues, “There is a long list of reasons why our NATO ally,
at this point, should not be humiliated.”
On Thursday, Lantos said that while he was “profoundly moved and
anguished by the Armenian people’s horrendous suffering” he remained
unconvinced that the massacres they endured technically constitute
genocide.
Instead, he cited Turkey’s unwillingness to allow U.S. troops to
use its territory to launch an invasion into northern Iraq as well
as the country’s growing closeness with Syria even in the wake of
former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri’s assassination.
“Turkey ignored our interests,” Lantos said. “Our allies must
understand that if they expect the U.S. to support matters of great
interest to them, we expect them to support the things that are
important to the United States.”
Armenians estimate more than 1.5 million died and hundreds of thousands
of others displaced in a planned genocide campaign between 1915 and
1923. Turkey maintains there was no systematic extermination plan,
that only about 300,000 Armenians were killed, and that Armenians
also killed thousands of Turks in the tumultuous last years of the
Ottoman Empire.