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Bush Seeks To Fill Armenia Envoy Post

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  • Bush Seeks To Fill Armenia Envoy Post

    BUSH SEEKS TO FILL ARMENIA ENVOY POST
    By Michael Doyle, [email protected]

    Miami Herald
    April 2 2008
    FL

    President Bush announced his nominee for ambassador to Armenia,
    a position that has been mired in controversy.

    WASHINGTON -- President Bush is trying again to fill a long-vacant
    ambassador's seat to Armenia that's gotten entangled in U.S. politics.

    In a move that could either revive a Capitol Hill conflict or reveal
    that passions have cooled, Bush has announced plans to nominate career
    diplomat Marie L. Yovanovitch as the ambassador to Armenia. If she's
    confirmed, she would replace the previous ambassador, John Evans, who
    was recalled in 2006 after he gave speeches in California endorsing
    claims of an Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire.

    Those claims inflamed sentiment in Turkey. Last fall, Turkish officials
    protested bitterly after the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved
    a resolution that condemned the killings of Armenians from 1915 to
    1923 as genocide. Democrats withdrew support for the resolution after
    President Bush called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to ask that it not
    be considered by the full House of Representatives.

    The collapse of the House resolution means that the Yovanovitch
    nomination may become this year's highest-profile issue for
    Armenian-Americans who have championed the genocide issue for decades.

    It also could become mired in the U.S. presidential campaign.

    Armenian-Americans make up sizable voting blocs in California and New
    Jersey, and candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is a member of the
    Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which will consider Yovanovitch's
    nomination.

    A 1980 graduate of Princeton who later earned a master's degree at
    the National War College, Yovanovitch has been serving since the
    summer of 2005 as the U.S. ambassador to the Kyrgyz Republic. She
    previously served in Russia.

    The United States last had a permanent representative in Armenia two
    years ago. Evans said he was recalled from the post early after he
    told audiences in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay area and Fresno,
    Calif., that Armenians were the victims of genocide.

    Evans said his characterization displeased Turkey and his State
    Department superiors. Turkey maintains that the word "genocide"
    mischaracterizes a complicated war in which many people died on
    both sides.

    "Armenian-Americans have attempted to extricate and isolate their
    history from the complex circumstances in which their ancestors were
    embroiled," the Turkish Embassy said in a statement last year.

    "In so doing, they describe a world populated only by white-hatted
    heroes and black-hatted villains."

    The unsettled question for Yovanovitch is whether she can avoid the
    fate of Bush's last nominee, career diplomat Richard Hoagland.

    Armenian-American activists and their Capitol Hill allies stymied
    Hoagland's nomination. He repeatedly ducked the word "genocide"
    during his June 2006 Senate confirmation hearing, opting instead for
    words such as "tragedy" and "horrific."
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