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Fri 12 Jan, 2007 08:51 am
Although the nomination of Richard Hoagland as US Ambassador to Armenia was blocked by Senate Democrats in the last Congress because of his refusal to call the World War I-era killings of Armenian genocide, now on the initiative of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice the White House has tried to resubmit Hoagland's nomination, because it effectively expired at the end of the previous Congress in December. President Bush has also supported this initiative of his State Secretary.
So our Armenian Diaspora in USA should understand that it is time to think about lobbying of resignation of those US politicians who in common with C. Rice endanger Armenian national interests. I think it has become clearer for us after settled intention of Bush Administration to cut short the tour of duty of John Evans, who in a social setting had the imprudence to refer to Armenian killings during Ottoman state as planned genocide. Moreover, after it the Bush Administration has openly warned that even congressional debate on the genocide "could damage relations with Turkey, a moderate Muslim nation that is a NATO member and US important strategic ally", which adamantly denies claims by scholars that its predecessor Ottoman state killed our countrymen in a planned genocide. Thus, it proves that present US leadership actively supports our adversary forces, for instance, such countries, as Turkey and Azerbaijan that often try to establish economic, transit, political and other types of blockades for Armenia.
Interesting.
Curiously, the question of the Armenian genocide played a highlighted moment in the Dutch election campaign last autumn.
To recount the episode roughly, from memory: the media ferreted out that both the Labour Party and the Christian-Democrats on their election lists included candidates of Turkish bacground, who refused to denounce the genocide on the Armenians - or even to admit that a genocide happened. This despite the fact that both parties have, in the European Parliament, strongly emphasised the need for Turkey to acknowledge and deal with this stain on its history as precondition for any eventual accession to the EU.
Perhaps partly also because public attention is focused (negatively) on possible Turkish accession anyway, this raised quite some publicity. Both parties were forced to sanction their offending candidates, or even (I dont remember) take them off their list altogether.
There was a codex to this still. On the list of the tiny, centrist party Democrats '66, which according to the polls was heading to fall further back from six seats in parliament to just two, there was also a Turkish-Dutch candidate. And the Democrats did not demand any testimony from her about her views on the Armenian genocide.
This woman eventually got elected into Parliament with lots of preferential votes. The fact that the Democrats got three seats rather than the two they had been polling was partly ascribed to this issue. Not without reason: shortly after the elections, it came to light that an employee of the Turkish .. ministry for Turkish communities abroad? Something like that - had sent out a letter to a database of Dutch voters of Turkish background, exhorting them explicitly to vote for said candidate of the Democrats. The employee had allegedly done this without knowledge of his superiors. This revelation caused a bit of an uproar as well, as an unprecedented example of a direct attempt by a foreign government to influence the election results.
Welcome to A2K by the way, Alike.
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