Armenians urge Bush to drop ambassador-designate for Armenia

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Under US law, the president can appoint senior officials for two years by bypassing the Senate when Congress is in recess, but it is not clear if Bush would do so for Hoagland because it could be a source of new friction with some leading Democratic leaders

ÜMİT ENGİNSOY

WASHINGTON - Turkish Daily News


A leading U.S. Armenian group has demanded that U.S. President George W. Bush withdraw the nomination of his pick for ambassador to Yerevan, who has refused to recognize the Armenian genocide.

Dick Hoagland is absolutely unacceptable. A denier of the Armenian genocide should never serve as America's ambassador to Yerevan, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) said in a statement received over the weekend.

ANCA asked U.S. Armenians to send messages to senators asking them to demand that the White House drop Hoagland's nomination.

ANCA's move came in the wake of the Democratic Party's landslide victory in last week's congressional elections that gave the Democrats control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Many prominent Democratic lawmakers supporting the Armenian cause are expected to assume key posts in the new Congress, and U.S. Armenian leaders already have said that the upcoming congressional session would provide opportunities for the passage of genocide resolutions in the House and the Senate.

Hoagland faced hostile reactions from Armenian groups after he declined to classify last century's Armenian killings in the Ottoman Empire as genocide during his confirmation hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in June.

The Republican-dominated committee then approved Hoagland's candidacy despite Armenian objections, but Sen. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, in September put a hold on the ambassador-designate's nomination.

Under U.S. law, all senior government officials, including ambassadors, must win the Senate's approval, and any senator can indefinitely block nominations. But such moves are rare because they put such dissenting senators under intense pressure.

But ANCA's move to urge Bush to withdraw Hoagland's nomination means that the Armenians have no intention of accepting the president's pick for ambassador, particularly at a time when a new congressional leadership, more friendly to the Armenian cause than the present Republican-led one, is due to take office in late January.

U.S. Armenians blast Bush and his Republican administration for Washington's official policy to reject genocide recognition. As a result the U.S. Armenian community mostly backed Democratic candidates in the 2004 and 2006 elections, although there are many Republicans in the Armenian caucus in Congress.

Bush in May fired Robert Evans, America's former ambassador in Yerevan, for publicly qualifying the Armenian killings as genocide in violation of U.S. policy and nominated Hoagland to replace him. U.S. Armenians strongly protested Evans' firing.

Under U.S. law, the president can appoint senior officials for two years by bypassing the Senate when Congress is in recess, but it is not clear if Bush would do so for Hoagland because it could be a source of new friction with some leading Democratic leaders.

The larger danger for Turkey is the prospect of a genocide recognition resolution's congressional passage at some point next year.

Bush administration officials recently have admitted that the president's efforts to stop a new resolution may fail in this dramatically changed political climate after the Democratic victory.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.