Genocide warning

The Washington Times
August 4, 2006 Friday

EMBASSY ROW; Pg. A15

By James Morrison, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is angered that President Bush's nominee to serve as ambassador to Armenia refuses to recognize the killing of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I as genocide.

Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota told the Associated Press this week that he plans to vote against confirming Richard E. Hoagland, a career Foreign Service officer who recently served as ambassador to Tajikistan.

In a committee hearing, Mr. Hoagland followed administration policy by declining to use the word, "genocide," to describe the killings between 1915 and 1917 by troops of the old Ottoman Turkish Empire.

Mr. Coleman told the AP, "I continue to be troubled by our policy that refuses to recognize what was a historical reality."

Like previous administrations, the Bush White House declines to call the killings genocide to avoid angering officials of the modern Turkish republic who insist the Armenians died in an uprising.

John Evans, the former U.S. ambassador to Armenia, was forced to resign after he publicly referred to the Armenia genocide.