Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Bush backs off commemorating Armenian genocide
by Michael Doyle, Knox News - March 27 2001
Posted: Friday, March 30, 2001 02:51 am CST

Scripps-McClatchy Western Service

WASHINGTON - Presidential candidate George W. Bush promised Armenian Americans that as president he'd properly commemorate what he termed the "genocidal campaign" against their ancestors.

But now, President Bush's State Department is denouncing an Armenian genocide resolution as dangerously shortsighted. The apparent backpedaling has Armenian American activists scrambling to hold Bush to his word.

"He's either going to be straight with it, or he's not," Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, said Monday.

In Congress, too, lawmakers friendly to Armenian American issues are preparing to write Bush in search of clarification on the perpetually touchy issue. Some voiced dismay Monday upon being informed of the latest State Department missive opposing a genocide resolution now before the Maryland Legislature.

"It's not really a good sign from the administration, I tell you that right now," said Rep. George Radanovich, R-Calif.

At issue, as it is annually, is how the United States should best recognize the horrific events that took place in the dying days of Turkey's Ottoman Empire. Some 1.5 million Armenians are said to have died, through massacres and deportations into the desert. Armenian Americans, about 500,000 of whom live in California, characterize the events as a genocide - the centrally planned extermination of a racial, political or social group.

Radanovich is now preparing to reintroduce legislation to commemorate the period. The key to the legislation, and to the debate that surrounds it, concerns the word "genocide."

Turkish officials contend that deaths occurred on all sides, during a chaotic period when some Armenians sided with Turkey's enemy, czarist Russia. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his new letter opposing a genocide resolution before the Maryland Legislature, added U.S. national security arguments as well.

"Legislation like this may undermine the very progress toward improved Turkish-Armenian relations that we all want to see," Powell warned.

Powell added that "despite the best intentions, legislation is not the best way" to recognize what he termed the "tragic events" when "innocent people, many Armenians, were brutally killed."

Hamparian said Powell's letter was "consistent, unfortunately, with a State Department pattern of complicity in genocide denial." The letter's thrust appears inconsistent, however, with Bush's campaign season rhetoric.

Campaigning last year, Bush agreed that "the Armenians were subjected to a genocidal campaign." He pledged that as president he "would ensure that our nation properly recognizes the tragic suffering of the Armenian people."

White House proclamations on April 24, considered the anniversary of the onset of the bloodshed, are now a foregone conclusion. For Armenian American activists, the real question is whether the language includes specific reference to a "genocide."

"The real statement we're looking for will be out on April 24," Hamparian said.

Bush's father, too, discovered the distinction between making campaign promises and keeping them as president. During his 1988 presidential campaign, the senior George Bush assured the Armenian Assembly of America that "the United States must acknowledge the attempted genocide of the Armenian people."

Once president, though, the senior Bush cited "the differing views of how the terrible events of 1915-23 should be characterized," and he actively opposed genocide resolutions then before Congress.

State Department officials could not be reached to comment Monday.

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