Bush may not prevent recognition of Armenian genocide in Congress

Sunday, November 12, 2006
UMİT ENGİNSOY
WASHINGTON - Turkish Daily News

Efforts to persuade Democratic Congress leaders to stop genocide resolutions may fail, the US administration acknowledges

U.S. President George W. Bush may not be able to prevent the passage of an Armenian genocide resolution in Congress after the rival Democratic Party won the control of both congressional houses in this week's landslide election victory, administration officials admitted.

The Democrats now have the majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate following the largest political earthquake in the United States since Bush's election as president in 2000.

Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who is expected to take over the House speakership from Republican Dennis Hastert, already has pledged to support the adoption of a genocide legislation in the new Congress.

And Bush administration officials now acknowledge that the president's efforts to stop a new resolution may fail in this dramatically changed political climate.

"The administration will oppose an Armenian genocide resolution as strongly now as it ever has in the past," Matt Bryza, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, told a small group of reporters here.

"What I'm saying is there's a change in political reality, so it's impossible for us to predict how this new mechanism will work," Bryza said. "We don't have the same mechanism we used to have in place."

In the outgoing Congress, the House International Relations Committee in September 2005 passed two resolutions recognizing last century's Armenian killings in the last days of the Ottoman Empire as genocide, despite opposition from the Bush administration.

But Hastert, a close Bush ally, never has taken the resolutions to a full House vote, prompting angry reactions from U.S. Armenians and their backers in Congress.

However, now it will be up to Pelosi, a member of the Armenian caucus in Congress, to determine the floor vote agenda in the House. On the Senate side, many leading Democratic senators, including new majority leader Harry Reid, are sympathetic to the Armenian cause.

On the eve of the 2000 presidential and congressional elections, the passage of another genocide resolution in a House floor vote was prevented at the last minute. Hours before the planned vote, then President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, intervened personally and successfully urged the Republican House leadership to stop the resolution on grounds of national security.

But under U.S. law, the president dost not have a power to order the House speaker to do or not to do something. In the 2000 case, it was up to the Republican speaker to agree or disagree with Clinton, and he agreed at the last minute, preventing a huge risk of a destroyed relationship with Turkey.

But now when a fresh genocide resolution comes to a full House vote, even if Bush personally intervenes to stop it, as Clinton did in 2000, there will be no guarantees that the new Democratic leadership will step back.

"The Armenian genocide issue probably will be the largest hurdle in U.S.-Turkish relations in the shorter term," said one Washington analyst.

In past cases Turkey has threatened to minimize its relationship with the United States in the event of the passage of a genocide recognition resolution.

A U.S. genocide recognition would be a grand prize for Armenians, and Turkish diplomats fear that such a move would be followed by compensation demands and even territorial claims by the Armenian side.

Although Bush's move to invade Iraq badly damaged Turkey's interests in the region, the Turkish government and diplomats still wished a Republican victory in last Tuesday's elections, fearing that a Democratic control of Congress would bring even worse consequences for Ankara.

But Turks bet on the wrong horse, and the Democrats won.

In the coming months the Turkish side is expected to seek a dialogue with key Democrats in the Congress, including Pelosi and Senator Joe Biden, who is due to become chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee. But analysts say that chances are slim for Turkish diplomats to dissuade the new Democratic leaders on the Armenian issue.

Pro-Armenian lawmakers are expected to submit fresh genocide recognition resolutions to both the House and the Senate shortly after the new Congress opens in January. The aim will be the passage of at least one resolution before April 24, the Armenian remembrance day in the United States.

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.