Reporting from Washington - Two plus a half years after lawmakers fell short in their effort to pass a quality to recognize the Armenian genocide, sponsors from the long-debated measure are launching a brand new bid to provide the concern before the Home.
Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village), who chairs the foreign affairs committee and backs the quality, ideas to provide it prior to his panel on Thursday.
It will come before the House "only if the votes are there to pass it," Berman said. "Once we pass it out of committee, we're going to attempt to get those votes."
The resolution, which would officially recognize the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century back as genocide, has run into opposition from previous Democratic and Republican administrations, which have warned it would offend Turkey, an essential U.S. military ally.
The resolution's supporters are hopeful they stand a better possibility this season because President Obama, as a candidate, stated he "stood using the Armenian American community in calling for Turkey's acknowledgment from the Armenian genocide." Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had supported the quality once they were senators.
Obama, nevertheless, disappointed Armenian Americans last season when he did not use the term "genocide" about the April 24 remembrance day, instead referring towards the killings as "one from the great atrocities from the 20th century."
Even though the Obama administration hasn't directly used a situation on the quality, Mike Hammer, spokesman for the National Security Council, said the president has "consistently stated his position on the occasions of 1915, and his view of that history has not changed."
"Our interest remains the achievement of a complete, frank and just acknowledgment of the facts," Hammer said in the statement. "We carry on to think how the greatest method to advance that objective is for the Armenian and Turkish individuals to address the details from the past being a part of the ongoing initiatives to normalize relations."
Aram S. Hamparian, executive director from the Armenian National Committee of America, stated: "The current administration's conduct, at least to date, stands in stark contrast to past administrations . . . that utilized every opportunity to score factors with Ankara by attacking the broad, bipartisan congressional majority" in assistance of the recognition effort.
F. Stephen Larrabee, an expert on U.S.-Turkish relations, warned in a recent paper for that Rand Corp., a Santa Monica-based think tank, that the resolution's passage would offer a "serious blow towards the Obama administration's efforts to put U.S.-Turkish relations on a firmer footing, and it could prompt the Turks to consider retaliatory action."
Similar resolutions were approved by the Home in 1975 and 1984 but didn't make it through the Senate. In 2000, a genocide quality was headed towards the House ground when the vote was abruptly known as away in the urging of President Clinton.
In 2007, after a the greater part of House members signed on as co-sponsors, the resolution appeared headed toward approval. But two dozen lawmakers withdrew their support, after the Bush administration and Turkish government warned that passage of the resolution could lead Turkey to block U.S. entry to its air bases, that are accustomed to get supplies to U.S. troops in Iraq. A House vote was put off again.
After that effort, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), who has long supported the resolution, is most likely to be a lot more careful about bringing it to the House floor. At present, the resolution has 137 House sponsors from each parties, such as significantly from the delegation from California, which includes a large Armenian American population.
Since the committee vote nears, lobbying from each sides of the concern is expected to intensify.
Among the critics, Rep. Edward Whitfield (R-Ky.), co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on U.S.-Turkish Relations, stated, "I think the American individuals would agree that Congress ought to be focusing on solutions to strengthen our economy and create jobs and leave this debate to the historians."
Berman, however, said that Congress, in championing human rights, "certainly should place a priority on recognizing this historical tragedy and calling it what it is."
