WATCH Bob Menendez Cross-Examine Proposed Envoy About Genocide

June 19, 2008 SEN. MENENDEZ CROSS-EXAMINES AMBASSADORIAL NOMINEE FOR ARMENIA | CLICK HERE TO WATCH VIDEO | U.S. Ambassador to Armenia Designee Marie Yovanovitch Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) Senators Obama, Boxer and others to Submit Written Questions WASHINGTON, DC – Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) castigated the Bush Administration’s policy of Armenian Genocide denial, today, dramatically pressing U.S. Ambassadorial nominee to Armenia Marie Yovanovitch regarding the Administration’s refusal to properly characterize Ottoman Turkey’s systematic destruction of its Armenian population as a genocide, reported the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA). The Associated Press, in an article today entitled “Nominee Refuses to Call Killings Genocide,” noted Senator Menendez’s “intense questioning” and the “prosecutorial style” of his inquiries during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing. The AP article, which was also carried by MSNBC and other media outlets, quoted ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian as saying, after the hearing, that, “we were troubled by Ambassador Yovanovitch's refusal to offer any meaningful rationale for the Administration's ongoing complicity in Turkey's denials.” Sen. Menendez, who had placed two consecutive holds on previous ambassadorial nominee Dick Hoagland for denying the Armenian Genocide, meticulously questioned Yovanovitch by presenting historical State Department documents from the time of the Genocide and comparing those statements with her opening remarks. "The US government - and certainly I - acknowledges and mourns the mass killings, ethnic cleansing and forced deportations that devastated over one and a half million Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire," said Yovanovich in her opening testimony. Following these remarks, Sen. Menendez presented the nominee with several documents quoting U.S. Ambassadors to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgethau and John Elkus, and other U.S. diplomats who served in the region at the time of the Armenian Genocide and documented the destruction of the Armenian population. Juxtaposing the eyewitness accounts of these U.S. officials with the definition of the crime as outlined by the U.N. Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide, Sen. Menendez asked whether the President’s annual April 24th remarks, Yovanovich's prepared statements, and her responses regarding U.S. diplomatic reporting matched the U.N. Convention, to which the U.S. is a party. Amb. Yovanovich sidestepped this question, stating instead that it is the President and the State Department who set the policy of defining historic events. In her testimony, she publicly confirmed that “It has been President Bush’s policy, as well as that of previous presidents of both parties, not to use that term.” Sen. Menendez responded, “It is a shame that career foreign service officers have to be brought before the Committee and find difficulty in acknowledging historical facts, and find difficulty in acknowledging the realities of what has been internationally recognized.” He went on to state, “And it is amazing to me that we can talk about millions, a million and a half human beings who were slaughtered, we can talk about those who were raped, we can talk about those who were forcibly pushed out of their country, and we can have presidential acknowledgements of that, but then we cannot call it what it is. It is a ridiculous dance that the Administration is doing on the use of the term genocide. It is an attempt to suggest that we don't want to strain our relationships with Turkey... I believe acknowledging historical facts as they are is a principal that is easily understood both at home and abroad. So while the Administration believes that this policy benefits us vis-a-vis our relationship with Turkey, I think they should also recognize that it hurts our relationship elsewhere and it tarnishes the United States’ history of being a place where truth is spoken to power, and acknowledgment of our failures of the past make us stronger, not weaker; recognizing the evils of the past do not trap us, but they set us free.” Read More and Watch Video. . .